Oksana Mont

• Prof. Dr.
• Professor at Lund University

This article examines limits to per capita living space (i.e. living smaller and/or sharing living space) as a measure for achieving sufficiency in housing. It studies the acceptance, motivation and side-effects of voluntarily reducing living space in five European Union countries: Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and Sweden. Insights are derived fr...

Given the outsized impact that digitalization has had on consumption over the last two decades, the lack of academic interest in sustainable consumption is noteworthy. In this book chapter, we set the scene for the fundamentally important discussion about how digitalization affects consumption. We ask whether digitalization is a positive or a negat...

The practice of product destruction, whereby retailers or manufacturers dispose of viable consumer products such as unsold goods or customer returns, is an extreme expression of the linearity of our current production-consumption system. This qualitative exploratory study aims to uncover why companies engage in this highly unsustainable and resourc...

Policy-makers are starting to acknowledge the urgent need for policy-intervention to achieve sustainable consumption. However, it is difficult to achieve policy-making that leads to impactful consumption interventions. Generally speaking, sustainable consumption can be achieved in three ways; to reduce consumption, to change consumption, and to imp...

Although access-based business models such as product rental hold promise for contributing to sustainable production and consumption, their diffusion is hindered by a lack of consumer acceptance. In order for rental models to resonate with consumers, they must be designed and communicated in a way that aligns with consumers’ needs. While many studi...

By changing the institutionalised practices associated with resource distribution, the sharing economy could support sustainable urban transformations. However, its impacts on urban sustainability are unknown and contested, and key actors hold different perceptions about them. Understanding how they frame these impacts could help solve conflicts an...

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted production and consumption patterns across the world and forced many organisations to respond. However, there is a lack of understanding as to how sharing platforms have been affected by the pandemic, how they responded to the crisis, and what kinds of long-term implications the pandemic may have on the sharing ec...

The home furnishings sector faces substantial sustainability challenges resulting from increasing consumption and premature disposal. Innovative business models that provide access rather than ownership hold promise for addressing these challenges, but past research has found that such models face many barriers to success. As the environmental bene...

The sharing economy is having a transformative impact on our cities, and many municipalities are facing a challenge – how to systematically engage with the sharing economy to both mitigate its negative and enhance its positive impacts. Academic understanding of municipal governance mechanisms of the sharing economy remains poor. To address this gap...

(1) Background Research and user experience suggests both positive and negative social impacts resulting from practices in the sharing economy: social cohesion vs. gentrification; inclusiveness vs. discrimination; flexible employment vs. exploitation. However, as yet, there is no framework for understanding or assessing these social impacts holisti...

In order to make our production and consumption systems more sustainable, there is a need to further explore and support novel business models with higher sustainability potential. Use-oriented product-service systems (u-PSS) are considered a promising alternative to traditional ownership-based business models, as they may result in lower environme...

(1) If policy-makers and businesses are to encourage consumers to participate in circular consumption systems, knowledge is needed about what motivates consumers to choose different disposal options. This paper aims to shed light on what motivates consumers to engage in circular home textile disposal practices. (2) Quantitative data was collected t...

Sharing economy platforms have been transforming production and consumption systems in cities around the world. While the sharing economy may contribute to addressing sustainability issues, its actual economic, social and environmental impacts remain poorly understood. Advancing more sustainably promising forms of sharing and leveraging its benefit...

Fashion upcycling, the process of using waste clothing and textiles to create new products, is an alternative to business-as-usual practices which can effectively address concerns on excessive consumption of energy and material resources and use of chemicals in the fashion industry. Scaling up fashion upcycling businesses could enable the transitio...

Background The predominant focus of academic research on the sharing economy has been on Airbnb and Uber; to this extent, the diversity of business models ascribed to the sharing economy has not yet been sufficiently explored. Greater conceptual and empirical research is needed to increase understanding of business models in the sharing economy, pa...

Cities have emerged as leading forces in transforming societies towards sustainable development. Numerous repairs, do-it-yourself (DIY) and maker communities across European countries are established to: improve resource efficiency by extending the lifespan products through repair and part recovery from urban material streams; create new sources of...

Upcycling is a process in which used or waste products and materials are repaired, reused, repurposed, refurbished , upgraded and remanufactured in a creative way to add value to the compositional elements. It has been part of human life throughout history, and the past few years have seen its revival, driven by multiple factors including growing c...

This chapter contributes to literature on sustainable innovation by critically engaging with the concept of sustainable innovation in business models. Four types of model purported to contribute to sustainability are explored: circular business models, product-service systems (PSS), business models for collaborative consumption, and business models...

The sharing economy is a new form of resource distribution that is affecting traditional markets, cities and individuals, and challenging the prevalent regulatory frameworks, social norms and belief systems. While studies have examined some of its disruptive effects on institutional actors, there has been less focus on the ways in which sharing eco...

A highly debatable issue is whether or not a paradigm shift toward the sharing economy could help to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of our time. This article contributes to the academic discussion by exploring the types of value created by sharing organisations and the strategies they use to institutionalise themselves in...

Addressing urban sustainability challenges requires changes in the way systems of provision and services are designed, organised and delivered. In this context, two promising phenomena have gained interest from the academia, the public sector and the media: “smart cities” and “urban sharing”. Smart cities rely on the extensive use of information an...

The existing research often overlooks the fact that accommodation sharing is not a homogeneous sector but comprises rental, reciprocal and free platforms. This paper aims to compare sustainability narratives held by operators and users of the three platform types with the narratives identified in the literature. First, drawing on framing theory, en...

Sustainable solutions are needed to drive a profound industrial and societal transformation towards a sustainable, low-carbon, resilient, equitable and prosperous future. This Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses possibilities and drivers for change by focusing on strategies for sustainable solutions with the underlying pur...

Welfare is commonly conceptualized in socio-economic terms of equity, highlighting distributive issues within growing economies. While GDP, income growth and rising material standards of living are normally not questioned as priorities in welfare theories and policy making, there is growing evidence that Western welfare standards are not generaliza...

Sharing economy is an umbrella term for a variety of bottom-up initiatives, public-private-people partnerships, business start-ups and local government schemes, all of which utilise the idling or unused material or built capacity of our society or human skills and capabilities. It is advocated as a transformative force from the ownership-based econ...

Success of strategies for solving problems of climate change, resource efficiency and environmental impacts increasingly depend on whether changes in public behaviour can and will supplement the technical solutions available to date. A renewed perspective on existing policy tools and potential strategies for behaviour change are entering public deb...

The transition to more sustainable production and consumption patterns and levels requires changes in mainstream business models. These are typically based on linear production processes and the throwaway mentality. Alternative business models are often based on ideas of circular flows of products and materials, in both production and consumption p...

The role of cities is changing from being places of material overconsumption to becoming enablers of sharing resources. The sharing economy is seen as one of potential answers to the unsustainable urban patterns and levels of production and consumption. Therefore, many cities develop online and physical platforms where inhabitants share, exchange a...

The role of cities is changing from being places of material overconsumption to becoming enablers of sharing resources. The sharing economy is seen as one of potential answers to the unsustainable urban patterns and levels of production and consumption. Therefore, many cities develop online and physical platforms where inhabitants share, exchange a...

This Handbook compiles the state of the art of current research on sustainable consumption from the world’s leading experts in the field. The implementation of sustainable consumption presents one of the greatest challenges and opportunities we are faced with today. On the one hand, consumption is a wanted and necessary phenomenon important for soc...

Livsmedel står för en stor del av hushållens negativa miljöpåverkan så det finns stora miljövinster att hämta här. Dagligvarubutikerna spelar en viktig roll för att öka marknaden för miljövänliga varor. Men även de stora butikskedjorna stöter på problem och det krävs samarbete på bred front för att nå framgång.

This study was conducted as part of a government commission which was given to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Swedish EPA) in 2014. The Environmental Protection Agency mandated the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University to conduct a research study on nudging. The study has served and...

Climate change mitigation and adaptation, while simultaneously allowing for economic development, improving the well-being of all people and ensuring social justice and equality and protecting ecosystems, seems to be the mankind. So far, the efforts to address growing environmental and human problems through technological solutions and policy meas...

Climate change mitigation and adaptation, while simultaneously allowing for economic development, improving the well-being of all people and ensuring social justice and equality and protecting ecosystems, seems to be the largest challenge in the history of mankind. So far, the efforts to address growing environmental and human problems through tech...

Sustainable solutions are needed to drive a profound industrial and societal transformation towards a sustainable, low-carbon, resilient, equitable and prosperous future. This Special Volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production addresses possibilities and drivers for change by focusing on strategies for sustainable solutions with the underlying pur...

Det resfria mötet – vårt sätt att arbeta och träffas utan att vara på samma plats fysiskt – blir allt vanligare. Men vad blir effekterna och hur mäter vi dessa?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why choice editing is being used as a tool to promote sustainable consumption, using the choice editing of fish as a case study. Design/methodology/approach – This study is explorative in nature and is based on a case study of choice editing of fish as a product category that has undergone...

Servicizing is a business model that holds the potential to support a shift toward more sustainable production and consumption by selling to the consumer the product's function, rather than the material product itself. This can offer direct environmental benefits by reducing the material and energy intensity of market transactions. Servicizing base...

The need to make consumption patterns more sustainable is widely acknowledged, yet effective policies for sustainable consumption are lacking. This article examines Nordic policy makers' views on why sustainable consumption research is difficult to apply in policy practice. We draw on the knowledge brokering literature to outline how the challenges...

Current production and consumption are unsustainable. Traditional business models do not fully account for ecosystem services and social costs. Innovative value creation models (IVMs) that take into consideration environmental costs and social goals in addition to financial profit in which new modes of production, consumption and value creation are...

With theoretical underpinnings from evolutionary-based environmental sociology, this paper scrutinizes a thesis that social motivation, rather than ecological or economic motivation, is the fundamental driving force behind all human activities. Empirically the study relies on qualitative interviews that have been conducted with representatives of t...

As Nordic countries have an ambition to be sustainability leaders, enabling sustainable consumption and lifestyles with efficient policies is an important part of reaching this goal. Research demonstrates that evidence from behavioural and social science is not routinely incorporated into policy design. Consequently, some persistent misconceptions...

This report presents the results of the research project ”Implications and Reporting of Virtual Meetings”, which is performed by the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University during 2011-2014 and funded by Swedish Energy Agency and Swedish Transport Administration. The project aims to develop a framew...

The general concern for the state of the environment sets requirements on strategies developed by companies to curb environmental and social impacts of their activities. One of the most notable changes in the way companies work with sustainability issues is the shift of the focus from own operations to improving the performance of supply chains. Th...

The paper aims to provide a systematic overview of the drivers and barriers for food retailers to implement corporate supply chain responsibility. The research is based on a literature analysis and semi-structured interviews with food retailers, with primary focus on Swedish conventional supermarket chains. The paper contributes to the existing bod...

In recent years, European policy has emphasised the role of green procurement as a policy instrument in efforts to make European markets more environmentally sustainable. By purchasing products and services with low environmental impacts, public bodies and companies may shape the markets of products and services and stimulate their environmental su...

Looking at consumption from a societal perspective, we can see that purchasing and behavior decisions are influenced by many factors, not the least which are what the people around us and in the media are doing. Other factors include economic influences, the marketing of products and technological innovations, and regulations governing consumption....

This introductory article situates the contributions that comprise this special issue within the field of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) studies. After a brief review of the policy history surrounding SCP, we organize our discussion and the subsequent collection of articles into two groups. The first suite of articles views the enviro...

Addressing climate change and the collapse of ecosystems without threatening the economy, while simultaneously improving the well-being of all people and ensuring social justice and equality, seems to be the largest challenge in the history of mankind. So far, all the efforts to address growing environmental and human problems through technological...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to explore the factors that drive or hinder organisations to implement socially responsible purchasing. Design/methodology/approach A literature analysis is complemented with empirical data from interviews with 20 private and public Swedish organisations. Findings The findings from the literature analysis are c...

Social and ethical issues in the supply chain are gaining importance in all types of organizations. Therefore some public and private organizations have already started to introduce socially responsible purchasing practices. However, current practices are limited and seem unsystematic. There is also a difference between few front-running organizati...

Many environmental strategies relying on a mere improvement of resource productivity and eco-efficiency of processes and products are not able to fully address the environmental impacts induced by increasing consumption. In addition to these strategies, the concept of sustainable consumption calls for changing the levels and patterns of consumption...

The number and diversity of chemicals produced and used in society today are growing in conjunction with the both evident and uncertain environmental impacts associated with the life cycles of these chemicals. Chemical management services (CMS) is a business strategy based on a strategic, long-term contract, according to which the supplier of chemi...

Pensar las empresas y hacer propuestas que signifiquen mejoras en todos sus niveles de acción, teniendo como marco de referencia la sostenibilidad, requiere una gran dosis de creatividad y atrevimiento, esto por dos razones básicas: cuando pensamos en la sostenibilidad siempre está presente un conjunto de ideas e imágenes que hemos construido a fue...

This article investigates the links between environmental and social activities of organisations and organisational legitimacy. The recent overemphasis on the business case for voluntary environmental and social activities of organisations is undermining the attention to other drivers such as legitimacy concerns. Previous literature has discussed h...

The classical market economy provided basis for emergence of a throwaway society that is based on economies of scale, planned obsolescence and growing demand for new products. This society is clearly unsustainable. An alternative model is the so-called circular economy based on optimised product life span, extended services and remanufacturing acti...

The concept of Product‐Service Systems (PSS) was suggested as one of the solutions to address the increasing levels of production and consumption. It advocates the view that sustainability can be reached if all elements of the system are optimised from economic, environmental and social perspectives. Lately, we have seen the proliferation of exampl...

In recent years we have seen the first signs of a paradigm shift in environmental public policy. While traditional policy has predominantly targeted industrial production, newer approaches offer a more systemic perspective, where the role of consumption is put at the centre. However, this change is not yet well reflected in actual policy making. An...

Approaches to address unsustainable ways of societal development constantly proliferate, but total consumption of resources and aggregate environmental impacts continue rising. This could partially be explained by weak attempts to develop comprehensive sustainability strategies that address the entire life cycle of products and especially resource...

It is often heard that Sustainable Consumption and Production may not be reached without active involvement of households. However, the methods at their disposal are typically limited to purchasing decisions or waste separation activities. This paper investigates whether households are really the culprit behind the slow progress towards SCP. Togeth...

The use of trichloroethylene (TCE) in the metalworking industry in Europe is regulated due to environmental, health and safety considerations and various countries apply different instruments to reduce TCE use. This paper examines two different regulatory approaches: risk management based on strict technical standards in Germany and a general ban i...

A shift in business thinking from selling products to providing service solutions to customer needs is becoming noticeable. It is driven by increasing competition and the need to identify new profit centres for producers of mature products. This paper identifies a new product group that could be interesting from the product-service system perspecti...

This special issue on Product-Service Systems: reviewing achievements and refining the research agenda shows the progress that has been made in the PSS field in the last decade, including various national and international research projects and companies' initiatives, important achievements and gaps at theoretical and practical levels. Most of the...

Book review of Arnold Tukker, Ursula Tischner, ”New Business for Old Europe. Product-Service Development, Competitiveness and Sustainability” M.Kurdve, O.Mont International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden Abstract: The new book by Arnold Tucker and Ursula Tischner ‘New Business for Old Europe’ provides an...

Although the need for new systems of production and consumption is constantly stressed in policy discussions, the sustainable consumption concept has not been largely translated into practice. The efforts of environmental policy makers to pay more attention to the consumption side are still rather meagre, and there is little integration of environm...

Sustainable development requires changes in how we consume and produce. This study provide a critical overview of current research trends, policies etc. relating to sustainable consumption. Future research needs and policy intervention is also discussed. Förf/Red: Oksana Mont and Andrius Plepys

Este artículo analiza las ideas y la contribución potencial de la desmaterialización y la eco-eficiencia y un marco de innovación para promover la sostenibilidad y la competitividad creciente en los negocios. Desde un punto de vista estratégico y con un acercamiento desde la productividad, las iniciativas para reducir la intensidad en el uso de rec...

In den letzten Jahren ist Integrierte Produktpolitik Teil einer hitzigen Debatte geworden. In ihrer letzten Kommunikation zum Thema hat die EU-Kommission ihre Position und zukünftige Maßnahmen zusammengefasst. Bedauerlicherweise sind die gewählten Formulierungen aber für den Leser unklar und eine Reihe zentraler Maßnahmen fehlen.

This paper addresses the increasing complexity of life-cycle thinking at the supply chain level. In order to reduce life-cycle environmental impacts the supply chain perspective needs to be extended to include management of stakeholders, who are traditionally not viewed as part of the supply chain. Stakeholder collaboration may positively affect th...

The product–service system (PSS) concept has been proposed as a way of dealing with unsustainable patterns of consumption in the business-to-consumer (B2C) domain. Existing alternatives to traditional consumption based on ownership, such as car sharing, communal washing centres and tool sharing schemes, indicate that more sustainable patterns of co...

In the last decade the concepts of sustainable production and consumption have gained importance. Since early 1990's we are witnessing a significant progress in the eco- efficiency movement, which aims at improving the environmental profile of production processes and products. On the other hand, the sustainable consumption concept does not seem to...