Browsing by Subject "enablers"

Abandoning carbon intensive lifestyles plays an integral role in mitigating the current climate crisis, especially in wealthy countries such as Finland where citizens’ carbon footprints are large. Mitigative lifestyle change can however be hard as many factors hinder the adoption of low-carbon practices. It can also be hard to recognize factors that could push lifestyle change forward. The significance and range of these factors, often called barriers and enablers, can vary between different places as each place constitutes its unique context. Studying barriers and enablers in different places can help us decide how to best advance the adoption of low-carbon practices in these contexts. In this thesis barriers and enablers are examined in the context of rural Finland. Characteristics that are often connected to rural Finland include long distances, scarcer services, conservativeness, and communality. The aim of this study was to examine what kinds of barriers to and enablers of low-carbon lifestyle change people dwelling in rural Finland experience, and which of these barriers and enablers have special links to the rural context. Eight citizens of Kauhajoki municipality were interviewed. The transcribed interview data was analysed with qualitative content analysis. Barriers and enablers were coded from the data, and 14 barrier and 13 enabler categories were formed. The themes of the barrier and enabler categories coincided well in terms of their content. Barriers were mentioned more often. Both barriers and enablers included factors related to infrastructure, availability of services and products, time, money, knowledge, health, social environment, habit formation, life situation, feelings, and perceptions of difficulty or easiness. They stemmed from the participants’ psychological processes and personal lives, the resources they had, and the physical and social aspects of their environment. Barriers and enablers with links to the rural context were most abundantly connected to infrastructure and availability. Based on the results, rural citizens live in a complicated push-pull environment of different barriers and enablers. Given that barriers appear to be more easily identified, it is important to start highlighting enablers. Even though in rural areas barriers and enablers related to the physical environment are most visible, attention should be paid to all factors to ensure that no potential for change is wasted. The results of this thesis help recognize both hurdles and helpers of low-carbon lifestyle change in rural Finland.