To Örebro University

Cross-border waste trade from high- to lower-income countries contributes to unsustainable economic growth through overproduction and overconsumption in the former while shifting environmental, social, and health costs to the latter. Drawing on Samir Amin's theory of delinking, this article presents waste delinking as an imperative to internalize the costs of affluent regions' post-consumption residues within their own territories and capacities. Using recent evidence on plastic, textile, and electronic waste, the article shows how closing export outlets constraints growth and can catalyze systemic transformation. Waste delinking necessiates a reorganization of production–consumption systems and therefore provides a concrete pathway toward degrowth-oriented futures grounded in non-colonial relations, localization, and ecological justice. 

This study examines the meanings and practices of ethical consumption in Iran, enriching dominant narratives that link ethical consumption primarily to institutional frameworks or environmental discourses. It argues that ethical considerations are instead embedded in local cultural, spiritual, and social norms. The research draws on 19 in-depth qualitative interviews with urban residents in the midsized city of Urmia. A thematic analysis was employed to understand participants’ practices across three stages of consumption: pre-consumption, consumption, and post-consumption. In the pre-consumption stage, structural constraints—such as limited access to reliable information and economic precarity—define the boundaries of ethical choices. The consumption stage is primarily influenced by sufficiency-oriented ethic through the avoidance of heyf-o-meyl (wastefulness and unnecessary consumption), reflecting values rooted in traditional and cultural teachings. In the post-consumption stage, the practice of ehsan kardan (acts of care and generosity) emerged as a key form of ethical divestment that minimizes waste and supports others in need. The study reveals that participants conceptualize ethical consumption through human-centered values—such as care, responsibility, and generosity—rather than through environmentalism or formal regulation. The results contribute to the literature on sustainable consumption by highlighting culturally embedded, locally meaningful forms of ethical engagement that constitute a moral micro-economy.

Ethical consumption can take different forms, each with its own justifications and underlying rationales. While countries in north-western Europe have well-established mechanisms for promoting ethically labelled products, the situation is different in many other regions across the world. This paper examines ethical consumption in Sweden and Iran to identify the societal factors that influence the phenomenon. Employing social practice theory and a multilevel perspective, the empirical study explores the assumption that ethical consumption develops in an interplay between different levels and between different social actors, which can both challenge and rely on existing capacities. Data was generated from 34 semi-structured interviews with citizens in both countries. Expanding beyond micro-level factors, this study makes a dual contribution to the field of ethical consumption. First, it offers insights into the diverse ethical perceptions related to consumption across societies, broadening the understanding of various aspects of the phenomenon. Secondly, it sheds light on the role of societal regimes in the emergence and adoption of ethical consumption.

Given the excessive consumption of natural resources in affluent contexts across the world, this paper argues that there is a need to discuss, critique, and advance the concept of ethical consumption, which is commonly understood as involving only relatively minor practices of consumption refinement, such as acts of boycotting and buycotting. The paper does so by linking ethical consumption to the concepts of sufficiency and care and suggesting a temporal categorization. The sufficiency lens is applied to show why and how the understanding of ethical consumption cannot be restricted to that of consumption refinement but must also address consumption reduction, due to high ecological and climate footprints in many coun-tries. A temporal categorization is helpful for further expanding on this idea. Therefore, we propose understanding ethical consumption in three stages; pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption. Finally, we emphasize the need to nurture a culture of responsibility and a sense of caring for others, including people, materials, and nature. Such a more comprehen-sive framework could help bring attention to both the promises and contradictions within ethical consumption, and some avenues for further research are suggested in the conclusion.

Despite its heavy dependency on conventional fuels, Iran is imposed to move towards renewable energyre sources due to a variety of reasons including energy conservation and environmental challenges. Although the residential sector has been in the foci, research indicates that Iranian households are not welcoming this change, therefore this study examines the acceptance intention among householders. In doing so, the study addresses the following questions: first, to what extent householders are ready to shift from conventional energy to renewables? and second, what can be the underpinning factors of such a transition? To follow these questions a theoretical model inspired by the modified framework of the Technology Acceptance Model, Social Acceptance Theory, and Diffusion of Innovation Theory has been developed. Data was collected from 462 rural inhabitants of Mazandaran province in 2019, who had not installed solar panels at the research time. Results show that only 19 percent of households intend to instal solar panels in the near future while 36 percent indicate no intention. Standardized regression weights demonstrate that the strongest total effect on the main dependent variable relates to the perceived ease of use. Overall, the model explains 19% of the variances of the dependent variable.

This article discusses the importance of a multilevel and intertwined understanding of ethical consumption given its conjunction with other social practices. Although the literature on ethical consumption is vast, the role of sociotechnical regimes including technological and cultural elements, infrastructure, market and regulation has been mainly overlooked in this literature. This may be so because ethical consumption practices that refer to other-oriented consumption practices are mainly considered in the view of the motivations and preferences of individual consumers. Due to the insufficiency of     individualistic approaches to explain stimulators and inhibitors of ethical consumption, indicates there might be “various constraints” in society and “competing demands” to hamper consumers from acting ethically. Therefore, to avoid an oversimplified view of ethical consumption, this paper contributes with a theoretical discussion on combining social practice theory (SPT) with a multi-level perspective (MLP). Although the SPT is a very well-structured framework in consumption studies, the necessity of a combined approach concerns the often-insufficient attention paid to structural prerequisites of various consumption forms in social practice theories. By understanding ethical consumption practices according to a multilevel framework, the paper emphasizes the importance of structural factors at macro- and mesolevels. It also contributes attention to how ethical consumption grows due to dialectical processes between levels, showing that niche practices can simultaneously challenge and rely on existing regimes

Taking into account the devastating consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore shifting energy from fossil fuels into renewable resources to achieve low-carbon societies has become one of the greatest challenges of our world. As a high-rate energy consumption country and carbon-intensive economy, Iran with its immense sun-kissed lands is greatly prone to develop the renewables’ share in its energy consumption basket. By implementing an integrated analytical model based on Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) this study has investigated households’ intention to apply solar panel technology for residential consumption. A total of 462 completed questionnaires were collected among villagers of Mazandaran to validate the proposed hypotheses by using structural equation modeling. Overall, a designed model that included the variables of compatibility, relative advantage, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) explained 23% of the variances of households’ intention. While the results also confirmed significant paths from perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) to installation intention, the study concluded that due to the weaknesses in communication channels, lack of appropriate energy culture and unprepared social structure, achieving the objectives of solar panel development is a premature target for the current context.

This study argues that individuals' consumption patterns should be considered as consequences of the production and reproduction of the public sphere settings that are affected by dominant social, political and cultural structures. Hence, we are aimed to study how a combination of social and individual mechanisms influences (un)sustainable consumption behaviors? The purposive sampling was utilized and data was generated from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews in Urmia, Iran. Data analyzing revealed 17 subcategories and five main categories including faded trust, deliberate negligence, commoditized human bonding, material self-identification and mental discharge that finally lead to the nuclear category of the study; reflexive consumption. Each main extracted category corresponds to one aspect of consumption. By studying socio-individual reasons for the dominant consumption patterns, this study contributes to obtaining a better understanding of the impacts of social mechanisms in creating (un)sustainable consumption patterns among the target sample.