ABSTRACT
This article approaches reconfiguring everyday practices from the viewpoint of challenging the social norms and cultural conventions that drive unsustainable consumption patterns. The article discusses results from a living lab intervention, where 37 Finnish households challenged themselves to reduce indoor temperature and the laundry wash cycles in autumn 2018. We discuss what was considered as ‘clean’ and ‘comfortable’ by the participants, and what kinds of deliberation, experimentation and reflection occurred during the attempts to challenge these notions underlying daily performances of heating and washing laundry. The results show the highly social and cultural nature of private consumption patterns and the underlying expectations of ‘normality’, and thus problematise the individualised or technology-driven approaches of many mainstream attempts to guide households towards more sustainable consumption. Living lab approach can provide fruitful lessons on household routines, as well as on acceptable ways to intervene in ‘normal’ and culturally endorsed forms of consumption.
Introduction
Despite a modest decline in recent years, the overall energy consumption in Europe remains unsustainable (Odyssee, 2019; Davies, Fahy, & Rau, 2015). Whilst there is an obvious need for technological innovations for energy efficiency, it is also clear that we need to fundamentally change and reduce energy consumption, to mitigate climate change on the scale and at the rate required. Approaches relying on methodological individualism have, however, been running into the so-called ‘attitude-behaviour gap’, referring to people not acting sustainably despite pro-environmental values and motivations due to many structural and institutional factors steering everyday life (see e.g. Blake, 1999; Gram-Hanssen, 2007; Strengers, Moloney, Maller, & Horne, 2015). Practice theoretical approaches have gained traction in this area by pointing to the need to focus on the combinations and dynamics of material elements and infrastructures, socially shared meanings, and skills and capabilities in performing everyday practices (e.g. Rau, Moran, Manton, & Goggins, 2020; Shove & Walker, 2010).
To steer consumption towards sustainability, for example, in residential heating, the focus should thus not be solely on people’s pro-environmental values, energy-efficient technologies or using them properly, but also on the shared understandings of normality, acceptability and appropriateness that steer the daily need for energy services such as warmth, and that are reproduced and maintained at different levels of the society (Hargreaves, 2018; Moloney & Strengers, 2014; Shove & Walker, 2014). Although personal motivations and values are undeniably important factors in changing energy consumption, they are nonetheless results of social processes and relationships (Jack, 2013; Laakso, 2019). For the more sustainable practices to diffuse within society and become the ‘new normal’, these underlying norms and conventions need to not only be understood, but also collectively challenged and changed (Aro, 2017; Jack, 2018).
While previous studies of comfort and cleanliness have focused on, for example, cultural differences (Godin, Laakso, & Sahakian, 2020; Kuijer & de Jong, 2012; Wilhite, Nakagami, Masuda, Yamaga, & Haneda, 1996), shared conventions (Hitchings & Day, 2013; Jack, 2018), know-how (Royston, 2014), community setting (Matschoss et al., 2021), or infrastructures, technical standards, metering and professional practices in shaping expectations (Gram-Hanssen, Heidenstrøm, Vittersø, Madsen, & Jacobsen, 2017; Shove & Walker, 2010; Strengers, 2011), this study adds further knowledge about how the escalating norms of comfort and cleanliness could be questioned and changed. In our study, 37 Finnish households challenged themselves to reduce their indoor temperatures and laundry wash cycles, thus reconfiguring practices related to thermal comfort and cleanliness. The aim of these ‘practice-based living labs’, inspired by design and intervention approaches based on practice theory (e.g. Devaney & Davies, 2017; Kuijer & De Jong, 2011; 2012; Scott, Bakker, & Quist, 2012) was to address the underlying dynamics driving mundane energy demand, and collectively learn about less energy-intensive ways to achieve comfort and cleanliness.
The two domains of daily consumption, heating and washing laundry, were selected for the study as they are very different in terms of practices and related energy use, and therefore offer a wider perspective on norms and conventions in everyday life. Home heating has large implications for household energy use, as well as for total energy use in Europe. On average, practices related to space heating constitute about 67% of residential energy usage in Europe (Odyssee, 2019). Finland has one of the highest culturally shared expectations for indoor temperatures in Europe (see Laakso et al., 2021b; Sahakian et al., 2021), which – combined with the cold climate due to the northern location of the country – makes heating-related conventions especially challenging and interesting. Practices related to washing laundry, in turn, represent quite a small share of total residential energy use, but are a good example of increasing use of home appliances and energy despite of technology development and increased consumer awareness (Laakso & Heiskanen, 2017; Yates & Evans, 2016). Compared with other European countries, the laundry practices in Finland are also energy-intensive due to excessive and even unnecessary washing of clothes (Alborzi, Schmitz, & Stamminger, 2017; Miilunpalo & Räisänen, 2018). Both heating and laundering also have important linkages to other areas of resource consumption, such as water use in laundering, showering and bathing embedded in the escalating expectations for cleanliness, representativeness and hygiene (Hand, Shove, & Southerton, 2005; Kuijer & De Jong, 2011). Moreover, they both represent domains in which the underlying conventions of comfort and cleanliness have remained rather unquestioned, despite their apparent links to unsustainable consumption patterns (Jack, 2018; Shove, 2003).
This article focuses on how the socially and culturally constructed notions of cleanliness and comfort affected the practices of keeping warm and clean, and how these could be challenged. The study contributes to the advancement of sustainable lifestyles by increasing the understanding on the social norms and cultural conventions, and the ways comfort and cleanliness are communicated in the society, guiding the everyday lives of households – as well as on the potential ways to challenge these to support more sustainable and less energy-intensive ways of living. The next section outlines the theoretical framework and the previous research on daily practices of keeping clean and comfortable, followed by the description of materials and methods of the study. The results section presents the findings in how the households deliberated, experimented with and reflected on the notions of cleanliness and comfort, and the concluding section discusses ideas for supporting cultural conventions towards sustainability.
Social norms and cultural conventions in daily practices
The pressing need to tackle unsustainable consumption has raised the need to complement the traditional means to steer consumption, such as information provision and technological changes, with approaches to understand the framework within which mundane consumption patterns occur. One of these approaches is based on social practice theory and the idea that our daily life consists of practices that are a ‘combination of material objects, practical know-how and socially sanctioned objectives, in contexts of socio-technical systems, social and economic institutions, and modes of spatial and temporal organisation’ (Southerton, 2013, p. 339). Sahakian and Wilhite (2014) underline the importance of the ‘social world’ in practices, referring to settings, norms, values and institutions as one pillar of practices, in addition to the body and the material world.
When empirically analysed, social practices are often seen to be represented in habits and routines of daily life, such as washing dishes, cooking and showering that also make most of our resource use in residential settings. The directly observable elements, such as materials and skills, are often at the focus of research when observing the performance of daily practices, however, the ‘hidden’ elements, such as social norms and cultural conventions are equally, if not more, important in shaping energy use (Aro, 2017; Shove & Warde, 2002). As noted by Jack (2018, p. 6), ‘the efficiency of technology matters less than the conventions that they allow’, thus making materials and skills elements that enable following norms and conventions.
In this study, social norms are seen as ‘moral rules’ related to how the elements of a practice that make up heating and laundry are held together by shared understandings and expectations of what ‘ought or should be’ in relation to how those practices play out (Sahakian et al., 2021). These moral rules are a result of learnings from personal history (such as the washing temperatures we learned to use for different items from our parents and grandparents), but also supported by more formal rules (such as those of recommended washing temperatures in clothing labels by manufacturers), informal rules (of, for example, proper work wear), and politically steered building regulations and standard temperatures providing quite a narrow window for ‘appropriate indoor temperatures’. Cultural conventions refer to the collective, culture-specific nature of these norms and the ways certain ‘normalities’, such as indoor temperatures of approximately 21°C or contextually characteristic and historically evolved wash temperatures, have become rather unquestioned. Cultural conventions can thus be seen as collective guidelines to evaluate how competent, appropriate or ‘normal’ are the ways of thinking and doing at the level of everyday performance (Aro, 2017). The tacit acceptance of energy-intensive daily practices can thus be attributed to expectations of society (or belief that these expectations exist) of what is normal and appropriate (Sahakian & Wilhite, 2014; Shove, 2003), and the strong normative commitments involved in reproducing these standards allow little space for elaborating on alternative ways of life (Sherriff et al., 2019).
While social practices are rather stable, they nevertheless change over time, and despite people may have limited capacity to challenge prevailing normalities, they should not be seen as powerless in changing their energy use. Practices are collective, but still reproduced – or reconfigured – by cohorts of ordinary people (Shove & Walker, 2010, p. 473). For example, Hitchings and Day (2013) noted how conventions with regard to what older people felt were the ‘right’ ways of achieving comfort were much less about what they did privately to keep warm and much more about what they did in the presence of others. Hansen (2018) found that childhood experiences impact later energy consumption patterns in housing and in general, changes to the composition of the household may trigger new heating practices (Royston, 2014). Similarly, experiences of cleanliness practices with limited access to water in music festivals or in intervention settings illustrate the social legitimisation of alternative practices (Browne, Jack, & Hitchings, 2019; Jack, 2013). Although practices are mundane, and many practice-theoretical studies make a distinction between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption (focusing on the latter), there exist strong symbolic elements in relation to cleanliness and comfort, such as communicating hospitability with warm home and presentability with clean clothes. Regardless of many practices being routinised processes of carrying out mundane activities, there is thus also reflectivity and cultural contestation involved, providing room for change (Halkier, 2020).
As noted by Jack (2013, 2018), ideas of what is dirty and clean come from knowledge of both cleanliness as a biological and social phenomena. When knowledge about these change, so do the ‘rules of hygiene’ (Douglas, 1966, p. 8). The fact that conventions of cleanliness and comfort have changed through history (see, e.g. Sahakian et al. 2021), suggest that the change can also take place in a less energy-intensive direction. Until now, however, most changes in these conventions have resulted in increased energy use, as having the same, stable indoor temperature during summer and winter, or wearing spanking clean clothes every day, have become a reality for most people in the developed world (Shove, 2003). Evolving norms and standards, inseparable from material arrangements and policy measures, also contribute to impeding the transformation of established practices towards sustainability (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2017; Sahakian & Wilhite, 2014). Air conditioning and electrified cooling represent newest examples of energy intensive comfort provisions and co-evolution of technologies and escalating expectations, where the use of these appliances has shifted from ‘luxury’ to a perceived ‘necessity’ (Chappells & Shove, 2005). At the same time, notions of comfort seem to be very important when discussing whether energy-efficient technologies such as heat pumps deliver the expected savings (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2017). In policy terms, comfort and cleanliness constitute ‘fine examples of non-negotiability’, defined as an attribute rather than an achievement, and their meaning being taken for granted (Shove, 2003, p. 17).
The challenge is thus to make the unsustainable norms and standards obsolete, while (re-)gaining popularity for sustainability (Aro, 2017; Shove & Walker, 2014). An increasing number of ‘practice-based interventions’ exist that aim to encourage households to reflect on the ways their daily routines are constrained and influenced by technologies, infrastructures and social norms and conventions (Laakso, Heiskanen, Matschoss, Apajalahti, & Fahy, 2021a). This article examines one of such practice-based interventions that focuses on changes in social norms and cultural conventions around what it means to be clean or comfortable.
Materials and methods
This research is based on an examination of a real-life intervention organised to understand and challenge prevailing energy-consuming practices. The intervention was built on a living lab approach, which has often been used as a governance tool and a research setting to drive sustainability by means of co-creation of knowledge and inclusion of citizens, experts and other actors as knowledge producers (Heiskanen et al., 2018). Following ideas of practice-based design and intervention approaches (e.g. Devaney & Davies, 2017; Kuijer & De Jong, 2011, 2012; Scott et al., 2012), practice-based living labs focus on everyday practices and attempts to reshape them and are implemented in close collaboration with households in their everyday life contexts (Laakso, Heiskanen, & Matschoss, 2017). The intervention focused on two everyday energy practices: space heating and washing laundry at home.1
Altogether 41 households were recruited in the living labs based on specific selection criteria: the households needed to have an opportunity to wash laundry at their homes and a possibility to influence their indoor temperature. In addition, attention was devoted to finding different households in terms of housing type, family size, age, and employment status (see description of the households in Appendix 1).2 To fulfil these criteria, households were recruited from two sites: from a residential area of Merihaka, Helsinki and from Porvoo, a small town in Southern Finland. Priority was given to participants without previous experience in other energy saving programmes, in order to reach beyond the ‘usual suspects’. Participants were recruited through various channels: advertisements in newspapers and social media and by directly contacting people during local events. Due to some drop-outs, the number of participating households at the end of living labs was 37.
The living labs took place between August and December 2018, with a follow-up in March 2019. The interaction with the households began with researchers visits to the homes of the participants prior to the first four weeks of monitoring the baseline of consumption. During these visits, the researchers provided digital thermometers for living rooms and bedrooms and electricity meters for the washing machines and dryers. The purpose of metering was to enable the participants to observe their indoor temperatures and electricity use for laundry during the baseline phase.3 The participants also filled in diaries to report the thermometer readings once a week, and laundry diaries, in which they described the type of each wash, wash temperature, whether the load was full or half, the time of the washing, as well as information about ironing and drying. The purpose of both meters and diaries was to monitor the households’ routines as well as to make these routines more visible for the participants themselves, so that they could discuss the practices in the following stage (see also Wilk, 2009; Strengers, 2011; for a mixed method practice research in water domain see Browne et al., 2014).
After the baseline phase, deliberation interviews were conducted with each household in Porvoo. In Merihaka, households gathered together for group discussions that revealed the diversity of practices and enabled reflection on these differences (Browne, 2016). Following Hitchings (2012), it was made sure that the participants were aware of the purpose of the interviews, allowing room for deliberation. Households also received material packages that included tips on how to stay warm and clean, and materials such as warm socks, hot beverages, stain removers and clothes brushes. The set challenges were thus complemented with material engagements and social interaction, providing ‘adaptive opportunity’ for reinterpretations of comfort and cleanliness (see Shove, 2017).
The households then challenged themselves to reduce the amount of their weekly laundering cycles either by half, as suggested by the research team, or to set their own personal target for a four-week period. The participants also committed to reduce their indoor temperature either to 18°C, or to their own personal target, for another four-week challenge period. Households were encouraged to challenge their underlying assumptions on how to perform practices, that is, to develop new ways to achieve the preferred level of comfort (such as wearing more and warmer clothes) and cleanliness (such as airing out clothes) with less energy use. However, achieving the set targets was not the main goal of the intervention, rather the focus was to learn from the practices and the change process, which was also communicated to the households at the start of the challenges.
During the challenge phase, the households were asked to continue filling the diaries. Participants in Merihaka also discussed their activities in a Facebook group, sharing experiences and tips, and researchers provided some input to the discussion. After the challenge phase, reflection interviews took place either individually in Porvoo or as a group in Merihaka. Final events at both locations were organised to present the findings of the living labs and to discuss the learning outcomes of the intervention with households and public and private actors working on energy issues, to support the dissemination of findings and to facilitate diffusion of practices (Laakso et al., 2021a).
The results of the present article are mainly based on qualitative interview and focus group data, which was collected at deliberation and reflection phases. The individual interviews were conducted in the participants’ homes and the focus group interviews were conducted collectively both including 1–2 household members. There were altogether 38 semi-structured interviews and four focus group interviews. In the first interviews, participants discussed their observations from the baseline phase and oriented towards the challenge periods. These deliberative discussions aimed to ‘cultivate’ unconscious routines into reflection and to co-create knowledge on how and why practices are performed as they are (Wilk, 2009). The latter interviews at the end of the challenges focused on the experiences from the challenges, reflections on what had changed and on the feelings that participating in the living labs had raised. As the actual experimentation took place between two interviews or group discussions, the participants were able to more deeply analyse their practices in the latter meetings (Hitchings, 2012).
The interview guide included pre-defined themes related to changes in routines, learning new skills and competencies, changes in material arrangements and representations of social norms (see Sahakian et al., 2021). Table 1 describes the research data in more detail. Each interview followed the same structure and same questions were asked from each household. In addition, the focus group interviews included questions that focused on the social interaction among the group.
Details of the interview data.
Interview . | Time span . | Number of participants/ households, n . | Text material (notes and transcribed interviews), page number . |
---|---|---|---|
Individual interviews, deliberation phase | 27.9.−9.10.2018 | 28 / 19 | 345 |
Individual interviews, reflection phase | 26.11.−5.12.2018 | 27 / 18 | 149 |
Focus group interviews, deliberation phase | 4.10.2018 | 8 / 7 | 28 |
8.10.2018 | 19 / 9 | 53 | |
Focus group interviews, reflection phase | 27.11.2018 | 12 / 5 | 37 |
3.12.2018 | 18 / 9 | 79 |
Interview . | Time span . | Number of participants/ households, n . | Text material (notes and transcribed interviews), page number . |
---|---|---|---|
Individual interviews, deliberation phase | 27.9.−9.10.2018 | 28 / 19 | 345 |
Individual interviews, reflection phase | 26.11.−5.12.2018 | 27 / 18 | 149 |
Focus group interviews, deliberation phase | 4.10.2018 | 8 / 7 | 28 |
8.10.2018 | 19 / 9 | 53 | |
Focus group interviews, reflection phase | 27.11.2018 | 12 / 5 | 37 |
3.12.2018 | 18 / 9 | 79 |
The interview data was analysed based on structured content analysis, which refers to interpretation of the content of data through the systematic process of coding and identifying themes and patterns (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). During the coding of the data, we looked into how the notions of cleanliness and comfort affected the practices of keeping warm and clean, how (or if) the participants managed to question and challenge these conventions during the living lab, and what effect this had on their daily practices. This method of analysis allowed us to capture the norms and conventions guiding practices, from the justifications for practices and their stability or change.
In addition to the interviews, data was collected by four questionnaire surveys: a recruitment questionnaire focusing on background information of the participants, a baseline questionnaire focusing on practices before the challenges, a closing questionnaire assessing how the experimentation had changed household practices, and finally a follow-up questionnaire sent to participants three months after the end of challenges in order to assess the persistence of the changes in household practices. In addition, small weekly questionnaires were sent to households during the baseline and challenge phases to monitor the temperatures, electricity use and how they were feeling. The data from these questionnaires is mainly used in this article to verify the outcomes of the challenge in terms of reductions in indoor temperatures and laundry cycles, and to describe the changes in practices.
Results
In this section, we describe the outcomes of the challenges in terms of how the notions of comfort and cleanliness influenced the ways the participants kept warm and clean, how these notions were questioned during the challenges, and whether this had an impact on the ways practices were performed, through emerging themes identified in the analysis of the interviews. As can be seen from the results, although the focus of the analysis is on social norms and cultural conventions, they are strongly linked with material elements and skills of performing the practices of heating and washing laundry.
Challenging the notions of comfort
Reflecting a broader Finnish culture of not actively managing heating, comfort in heating was much related to easiness and effortlessness (Karjalainen, 2009). The participants preferred stable indoor temperatures and only a few of them actively adjusted their heating. This is also due to the co-evolution of practices, buildings and technologies that has led to well-insulated houses keeping the cold outside, heating systems being quite inflexible and the temperatures changing slowly especially in the apartment buildings, where the minimum temperature of the apartments is centrally adjusted and usually rather high. Finnish people are also accustomed to draughtless homes, and prefer not having temperature differences in different rooms that would cause draught. Comfort was indeed strongly linked with draughtless, but still fresh and even cool air, and many of the participants kept for example windows open in the evenings.
. Alternative means to keep warm (Heiskanen, Laakso, Apajalahti, & Matschoss, 2019).
. Alternative means to keep warm (Heiskanen, Laakso, Apajalahti, & Matschoss, 2019).
As the participants were used to having a warm house throughout the day, the idea of temporal variations in indoor temperatures were rather new to many and raised awareness of – or the need for – thermal comfort at different times of day. This need was related to having a nice, calm start for the day in the mornings or winding down in the evenings after the workday. The need for warmth was also related to a very practical need to be able to work at home, representing the interdependence of practices such as those of working and heating. Many participants mentioned how they wanted the home to be warm when you felt tired and wanted just to sit on a sofa and watch television:
I thought it was cold here. It wasn’t fun anymore and made me think of my childhood when all of us used to sit there and mom and dad said that, it doesn’t need to be so warm in the winter. And then I thought like, I have really become so modern. That I don’t want to live in such a cold temperature anymore. For me it was maybe, this annoying part, it made me really realise that the coldness irritated me, because it felt like, when you come home in the evening after a long day at work and you want to relax but then you had to start putting on more clothing. (FI25, F)
Feeling cold thus also reminded some of the participants of their childhood or when they were living in some other country or in a previous, draughty house, and they protested against what they felt was a decrease in their present standard of living, which illustrates the contextual nature of comfort and how notions of comfort also depend on the material conditions, such as the energy efficiency of the building. Some also noted how it was ok to have cooler indoor temperatures for example in summer houses, while having bathrooms warmer than the rest of the house was considered important by most.
Reduction in indoor temperatures also led to participants seeking comfort from other sources. Some participants told how they started to shower in the evening instead of the morning, because they felt so cold in the evenings. Some told how they enjoyed sitting by the fireplace in the evenings, indicating that the appreciation towards centres of heat in producing comfort and cosiness might have increased (see Laakso & Heiskanen, 2017). These examples illustrate the temporality of the notions of comfort, how the participants temporally modified their practices to feel warm in the reduced temperature, and how the sources of comfort became more various.
Relatively high and stable indoor temperatures have led to convention of wearing light clothes indoors also in a cold season. Some participants highlighted the comfort deriving of not having to wear many clothes at home. One participant even admitted that they preferred ‘a t-shirt temperature’ rather than ‘a sweatshirt temperature’ (FI31, M) in the home, and others even described how they would feel ‘anxious’ (FI37, M) if they had to wear woollen or other warm clothes inside. Some of the participants, to the contrary, told how they ‘are always wearing wool socks’ (FI38, F) and other warm clothing, and even enjoy the comfort provided by the contrast between cool, fresh air and warm clothing or bedding:
You just sleep so well already when it’s a bit cooler and, when you go under the feather duvets you have like goose bumps and then you truly have a good night’s sleep. And on the other hand, then it somehow feels so nice in the winter to create a bit like hygge situation for yourself, when you put on a jumper and wool socks and a bit like that. Maybe it creates a nice contrast to the working me when you get to have like warmer vibes at home. (FI32, F)
Wool socks are indeed a very common and culturally embedded feature in Finland (see also Figure 1), and they enjoy general acceptance, as it is common that older relatives knit woollen socks to the younger generation as a symbol of care. Unlike in previous studies on the social expectations towards thermal comfort (see Laakso et al., 2021b), the participants in this study seemed to not feel uncomfortable in inviting guests in a cooler home, and providing wool socks and blankets for guests was considered acceptable. The notion of thermal comfort was thus something that was allowed to be contested and negotiated in these situations with the help of culturally embedded material elements.
The reduced temperature nevertheless created tensions among the participants. One participant (FI03, F), for example, describes how she ‘had two cardigans on all the time and had the wool socks on always’ as she had difficulties in adjusting to the new temperature. Most participants, however, who initially considered their indoor temperature comfortable before the challenge, also thought that the reduced temperature during the challenge was suitable. The perception of comfort thus simply changed during the challenge due to getting used to the new situation, and some even told about feeling very hot and uncomfortable when for example visiting friends.
Challenging the cleanliness norms
One theme that arose from the interviews and group discussions was the wash temperature and how that is, in addition to the frequency of washing laundry, a defining issue for whether clothes and other textiles are perceived as clean or not. Households most commonly washed their clothing at 40°C and bedlinen and towels at 60°C. Although most participants testing lower temperatures did not actually notice any difference between clothes washed at 30° or at 40°, some thought that washing at lower degrees is simply not enough for the clothes to get clean. In most households, the wash temperatures especially for bedlinen and towels did not change – only a few households started to wash their sheets at 40°C instead of 60 – or at 60°C instead of 90. As told by one participant (FI41, F), it has been ‘repeatedly told’ and ‘taught to us for ages and ages’ that cotton does not get clean under 60°. This convention has its origins in the public education campaigns during the first half of the twentieth century: all linen was to be washed in at least 60°C to prevent tuberculosis that was a severe problem in the country at the beginning of the century. Most of our participants following this rule despite its obsolescence illustrates the strong and tacit role of shared beliefs related to cleanliness. As one participant (FI32, F) describes, it ‘just feels right’ that the sheets are washed at 60°, although she recognises that this way of thinking may be ‘outdated’, echoing the findings by Miilunpalo and Räisänen (2018) about people washing their laundry in 60°C ‘just to be on the safe side’.
What the households also found difficult to change, was the change interval of bedlinen and towels. These were items that most participants thought should be absolutely clean and washed regularly – similarly with the notions of comfort, cleanliness seems to have a strong temporal element, dating back to the agrarian Finnish society, where it was common to wash sheets and towels once week in a joint effort between several households or servants, and continuing in the urban setting in the form of weekly laundry shifts in the shared laundry facilities. Many participants indeed changed their towels and sheets every one or two weeks, and this interval was something most of the participants were not ready to elongate even if they tried. Routine, together with a strong sense of appropriate performance, constituted a periodicity with ‘a momentum of its own’ (Shove, 2003, p. 126).
Rising expectations towards cleanliness were raised by many. One participant (FI30, M) in a focus group interviews reminded the others about the relativity of social norms and expectations towards cleanliness: ‘In the 80’s everyone was smoking in their homes, if we would smell like that now, we would be shocked’. Referring to this, he also questioned whether it is necessary to have ‘perfectly clean, just washed clothes’ or would it be enough to have ‘normally clean clothes [without stains]’. Some participants brought up the public discussion for example in newspapers and television having very judgemental tone when discussing cleanliness, preventing more sense-based deliberation on whether an item needs to be washed or not. This also illustrates how cleanliness has ‘powerful commercial interests’ (Shove, 2003, p. 94; see also Jack, 2018). During the challenge, these participants started to question the ‘harmfulness’ of not laundering regularly. As one participant (FI25, F) described, ‘there aren’t any bacteria […] in my own home’ that would require a 60-degree wash. However, breaking the old ways of thinking and doing requires not only new ways to understand what is clean, but also skills and knowledge related to how clothes get clean in different temperatures:
There was an article in the evening paper about “yuck, don’t you wash your pillow cover every week?” or something, whatever it is, how disgusting it is and I think like, okay, I’ve never thought that it’s disgusting but articles like that are really harmful because they make people think that … But what does it matter if you don’t wash your pillow cover every week or every two weeks or even once a month? If it doesn’t smell and it’s not dirty why you should wash it? But you see baffling things like this, and [yet] what kind of bacteria can be on the pillow that’s super harmful? (FI29, F)
Most of the households agreed that it is important to have clean clothes and be presentable when they go to work, parties or otherwise among other people, but it is okay to wear dirtier clothes at home. Similarly, the clothes that children wore in day-care were expected to be clean, and one participant (FI40, F) even described how she had been told by the day-care workers that her child’s muddy clothes ‘need to be washed’. Despite of these strict social norms, only two participants actually described how they felt ‘a bit more dirty’ due to the challenge. They were indeed concerned about whether other people might notice them wearing the same clothes as the day before or if their ‘sense of smell is good enough for me to notice myself if my clothes smell sweaty’ (FI43, F), as her colleagues would not tell her. One participant (FI43, F) described tacit social rules in her workplace as ‘a custom to not wear the same clothes two days in a row’. Although these socially maintained and reproduced standards of cleanliness were questioned during the challenge, many participants recognised that even talking out loud about issues of cleanliness and hygiene was ‘embarrassing’, as these issues were simultaneously considered private and personal. They just rather follow the unspoken rules – especially outside the home.
Some participants even told that they did a bit more work from home to avoid laundry. One participant (FI14, F) told how, due to the challenge, her home clothes became even dirtier than before, but it did not bother her as she had ‘the right to’ wear dirty clothes at home. Similarly, another participant (FI09, N) described how her home sweater is ‘so grimy that I can’t get it completely clean anymore […] my sister always asks ‘are you still wearing that’’. Colours were also used to ‘cheat’ senses: some preferred dark clothes in which the stains were not as visible, as yellow stains in the armpits were considered disgusting and white clothes in general quickly turned grey and dirty-looking. The notion of cleanliness was also something that could be, to some degree, recreated by airing clothes and putting them back to the closet or a clothes rack ‘almost as if they were clean’ (FI09, F), and using products such as laundry vinegar to keep the clothes and sheets feeling fresh for longer:
Before this, I couldn’t have imagined wearing the same shirt for two days, the kind that’s in direct skin contact. But now I put the shirt on the balcony to air and started sniffing it if it’s okay, that’s all. Because it doesn’t really get dirty, so I told myself it’s completely fine to wear it for two days. (FI06, F)
For many, however, the desire to ‘feel fresh’ was important and this was related to the need to change into a clean shirt every day that they were not ready to compromise during the challenge. Putting on a sweaty shirt felt like ‘you had a flu’, as one participant (FI31, M) described, illustrating the general feeling of stale and discomfort of not wearing clean clothes. One participant even washed clothes when she considered them untidy and wrinkled – even if they were taken straight from the closet – to make them look tidy again. Changing this habit required reconsidering what is clean and when an item becomes dirty and learning new skills such as wearing undershirts.
Concluding discussion: Challenging norms and conventions
It has been repeatedly shown that the mere focus on individual behaviours and attitudes is inadequate to shift mundane consumption toward sustainability (e.g. Blake, 1999; Gram-Hanssen, 2007; Strengers et al., 2015). Also this study shows that social norms and cultural conventions steer in many ways the performances of everyday practices considered normal, appropriate and desirable, confirming previous findings in literature (e.g. Shove & Warde, 2002; Sahakian & Wilhite, 2014; Jack, 2018).
Our findings highlight that the living lab intervention enabled the reconsideration of notions of thermal comfort, previously based to a high degree on stability and warmth, now on increasing appreciation towards contrast of temperatures, freshness, recognising the temporality and spatiality of needs for thermal comfort, and getting used to cooler temperatures in home (see also Royston, 2014). Changes in notions of cleanliness, previously strongly based on the idea of using the garment only once before washing it, or on a set length of wear of bedlinen, had to do with small, incremental adjustments in wash temperatures and numbers and lengths of use of clothes or bedlinen with which the decision to wash based on sensory judgement rather than a previously adopted convention, as well as adopting new ways of recreating cleanliness by airing clothes and removing stains (see also Jack, 2013).
However, our results also confirm that social norms, such as those related to being presentable at work by wearing clean clothes or to following given standards in washing sheets, are difficult to challenge by individual actions. Empty laundry basket and high wash temperatures were seen as a sign of decency and care, even if this meant wasting energy by not washing full cycles (see also Miilunpalo & Räisänen, 2018). A cooler home seemed to be easier to justify to other people than dirty clothes – for example, participants felt fine with providing wool socks to their guests. If it is by choice and not by necessity produced by, for example, socio-economic status, a cooler home might represent positive conventions such as health effects, frugality or environmental awareness, whereas such positive connotations were difficult to find for not wearing clean clothes – or at least they could not outweigh the negative notion of not being clean. Moreover, unlike the feeling of cold, feeling of unclean is more vague and private, and dependent on (sometimes outdated) standards and rules concerning hygienic wash temperatures and intervals, and while this information may be insufficient or contradictory, people feel inclined to do what they have learned – despite having the support for change from the living lab, and even if they themselves questioned the propriety of these norms.
While the official standards for indoor temperatures provide a rather narrow understanding of thermal comfort, it thus seems that there is more room for contestation of these limits than there is for questioning for example the proper wash temperatures or acceptable ways of dressing in public. This observation has implications for how cleanliness is communicated in the society. As a counter narrative to the images of people wearing spanking clean clothes in magazines, television advertisements of detergents fragranced to stress the freshness, or intimidating newspaper articles about bacteria and dust mites requiring high wash temperatures, sustainability communications might emphasise that ‘normally clean’ is good enough, as one of our participants phrased it, to also curb the ‘escalating production of ‘dirty’ clothes’ (Yates & Evans, 2016, p. 112). This is echoed by the notion made by many of the participating households that it does not have to be as clean in the home all the time, which also made them feel more relaxed. This is an important avenue towards sustainability, as it steers the idea of sustainability from efficiency to sufficiency (Godin et al., 2020).
Another finding shows that the notions of comfort and cleanliness are not stable, but vary between family members, as well as spatially and temporally. Even if the adult participants found positive connotations with cooler indoor temperatures, highlighting for example the contrast and temporally differing needs for comfort, or the relaxing atmosphere of cleaning less and right for dirty clothes in home, children’s comfort or cleanliness was not compromised (see also Strengers, Nicholls, & Maller, 2016). Many participants were reluctant to reduce the temperature in rooms where children often stayed, because of concerns towards their health and comfort. There is thus a need to communicate on the health effects of indoor temperatures and the acceptability of sensory evaluation of comfort, instead of relying only on temperature readings (see also Royston, 2014). This is also an interesting finding from the viewpoint of intergenerational trajectories of practices: by reproducing practices of cleanliness and comfort, people are distributing beliefs and standards onwards to their children already in early stages of living (e.g. Gram-Hanssen, 2007; Hansen, 2018).
The spatial and temporal variability in norms can also provide some avenues for acceptable ways to intervene in ‘normal’ and culturally endorsed forms of consumption. For example, the lower standards for thermal comfort in summer houses, recognition of the diurnal variation of need for warmth and more tolerant attitude towards dirty clothes at home, illustrate how understandings of cleanliness and comfort can vary significantly in different contexts. The increasing trend of teleworking (especially after the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, see Sutela, 2020) is interesting in this sense, allowing for less laundry – while setting some limits to dropping temperatures at home (illustrating the interconnectedness of practices). The high share of our participants wearing wool socks and providing them also for their guests, allowing cooler indoor temperatures, is a good example of a more sustainable convention that could also be brought to work places and other sites outside home. These examples of more sustainable ways of achieving the preferred level of cleanliness or comfort, or being happy with less, could be communicated in media, thus facilitating public discussion on what is, or could be, enough.
Practices are constantly negotiated against expectations in various social situations and surroundings (Heiskanen et al., 2020; Laakso, 2019). Heating practices in apartments are highly dependent on housing associations, the need to keep children’s clothes clean was partly caused by expectations from day-care centres, and work communities have a lot of power in steering how people dress: do they need warm clothes also at work, how formal are the clothing requirements, and is it acceptable to wear the same shirt for more than one day. Dressing up appropriately is based on fixed social norms in the workplace and other social environments where people resist breaking established conventions. These are forms of ‘social stickiness’ in relation to the symbolic meanings of cleanliness and social representations (Godin et al., 2020). Therefore, as the experiences of participating households from their work communities, day-care communication and childhood memories illustrate, the contexts within which the notions of comfort and cleanliness are developed and maintained are diverse and thus challenging them should not be a task left solely for households but require collective action (see, e.g. Jack, 2013; Royston, 2014; Shove & Walker, 2014). A study by Matschoss et al. (2021) suggests that challenging social norms in a community activity rather that individually may bring better results in terms of change in practices. For example, the unspoken rules towards signalling care and wellbeing by spanking clean clothes, should be questioned not only in homes and by parents alone but also together with schools and other institutions when giving recommendations and creating standards.
For sustainable consumption efforts, there is a huge challenge in dissolving the dominant ‘normal’ forms of mundane consumption determined by social norms and cultural conventions, which comprise of socio-demographic constraints, material, technological and spatial configurations, and competences, knowledge and understandings that come together at each performance of a practice (Southerton, 2013). In relation to heating and laundering, the aim is to provide material arrangements and conditions that enable new (or old) interpretations of comfort and cleanliness to take hold (Shove, 2017). However, as the results from this study show, opportunities for deliberation on and challenging norms maintaining present, energy-intensive practices are also greatly needed. From this perspective, living labs, such as the one described in this article, could provide fruitful spaces for collective discussion on preferred levels of comfort and cleanliness and experimentation with alternative ways to achieve these.
It is important to acknowledge that the living lab setting also created its own, spatio-temporal context within which the households acted and were allowed to experiment and innovate. Especially the focus group discussions and social interaction during the challenges, in which half of the participants took part, were considered valuable and empowering. These findings are in line with previous research, showing that people rarely know what others do and thus underlining the value of learning from others (Heiskanen, Nissilä, & Tainio, 2017; Hitchings & Day, 2013; Matschoss et al., 2021). The norms are indeed social: if others are viewed as living according to sustainable ideals, it is more acceptable and also easier for everyone to live in moderation (Aro, 2017). Although the living lab design allowed the participants to co-create knowledge on the routines and their change, as well as to outline the boundaries of acceptability in challenging norms and conventions, it is important to address the very normative aspect of the intervention: reducing consumption would be held a good thing. This raises important questions from the viewpoint of self-reflection: what kind of context or community does the research create around researchers and participants, what kind of support (and pressure) does this community create, and what happens when the living lab ends (see also Heiskanen et al., 2018; Matschoss et al., 2021).
The relatively small number of households in the living lab enabled an in-depth study on the participants’ experiences. The findings provide valuable knowledge on the prerequisites for changing energy-consuming practices, thus illustrating and providing knowledge on the wider phenomena. As noted by scholars such as Hargreaves (2018), Rau et al. (2020) and Shove and Walker (2014) the present policy measures need to be complemented and elaborated based on a better understanding on what energy is for and how to achieve comfort and cleanliness with less energy. The findings of this study are promising in this sense, however, the processes of deliberation, negotiation and contestation should be scaled up outside the living lab setting for wider practice reconfiguration (see also Laakso et al., 2021a). This could be done by public discussion in media on escalating expectations towards cleanliness and comfort, engaging communities in experimenting with alternative and more sustainable practices, and policies acknowledging the role of social norms and cultural conventions in resource consumption. Allowing less consumption, for example by more individualised management of heating in apartment buildings, supporting the use of joint facilities for laundry, and by being more tolerant towards diversity in social situations, would make it easier for people to find the most suitable levels of comfort and cleanliness and ways of achieving them.
In future research, more attention should be paid to engaging people in different life situations, including those belonging to more marginalised groups, to be able to discuss also aspects of energy vulnerability and other forms of deprivation in relation to societal expectations and culturally created needs. The living lab method utilised in this study could also be used to challenge other escalating, energy-consuming expectations, such as those of increasing living space. Moreover, experiences from previous studies (e.g. Nicholls & Strengers, 2015; Royston, 2014) could be utilised to study the ways social norms and cultural conventions link practices, such as heating and laundering, to practices of socialising, parenting and caretaking, as well as to the ways these norms and conventions could be collectively challenged, from households and communities to media representations, institutionalised rules and recommendations. What is perceived normal, even in as private spaces as homes or bathrooms (Shove & Walker, 2010), and the ways the notions of comfort and cleanliness are constructed also bring up the underlying power dynamics and how people do not negotiate about comfort and cleanliness only within the household, but with other actors from utility providers to building management companies and other residents, co-workers and employers, and many other actors beyond the energy sector (e.g. Nicholls & Strengers, 2015; Sahakian et al., 2021). The role of all of these – policies, manufacturing of products and services and imagery from media – in making and shaping the present and future needs should be critically evaluated in research and policy.
Notes
Our research is executed in context of a European ENERGISE project, where altogether 308 households participated in the ENERGISE Living Labs (ELLs) in eight participating countries (see Sahakian et al., 2021).
Despite heating being highly relevant topic in terms of energy vulnerability (see, e.g., Middlemiss & Gillard, 2014), we do not focus on energy vulnerability in this study and it was not raised up in our interviews. In Finland, heating is often included in rent in apartment buildings, so for many participants in our research the economic benefits of reducing indoor temperatures was not a motivational factor for participating in the study. Monetary savings were more relevant for people living in detached homes, however, none of them mentioned experiencing energy vulnerability.
For research purposes, the temperature data was complemented with data from remotely read logging thermometers.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the households who participated in the project, as well as the ENERGISE project partners in Finland and in other countries.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
Appendix 1. Description of the participating households (n = 41).
Household size (%) | 1 member | 23 |
2 members | 40 | |
3 members | 19 | |
4 or more members | 19 | |
Contact person age (%) | 29 or younger | 9 |
30–49 | 42 | |
50–69 | 40 | |
70 or older | 9 | |
Contact person education level (%) | Tertiary | 62 |
Secondary/ vocational | 33 | |
Primary | 3 | |
Other/ unknown | 3 | |
Contact person employment status (%) | Full-time employed/ entrepreneur | 76 |
Part-time employed | 3 | |
Student/ unemployed | 11 | |
Retired | 11 | |
Housing type (%) | Detached | 47 |
Semi-detached/ terraced | 2 | |
Apartment | 51 | |
Laundry equipment (%) | A++ rated washing machine | 40 |
Washing machine with eco-programme | 38 | |
Tumble dryer/ drying cabinet | 30 | |
Regular use of shared laundry facilities (i.e. laundry room) | 5 |
Household size (%) | 1 member | 23 |
2 members | 40 | |
3 members | 19 | |
4 or more members | 19 | |
Contact person age (%) | 29 or younger | 9 |
30–49 | 42 | |
50–69 | 40 | |
70 or older | 9 | |
Contact person education level (%) | Tertiary | 62 |
Secondary/ vocational | 33 | |
Primary | 3 | |
Other/ unknown | 3 | |
Contact person employment status (%) | Full-time employed/ entrepreneur | 76 |
Part-time employed | 3 | |
Student/ unemployed | 11 | |
Retired | 11 | |
Housing type (%) | Detached | 47 |
Semi-detached/ terraced | 2 | |
Apartment | 51 | |
Laundry equipment (%) | A++ rated washing machine | 40 |
Washing machine with eco-programme | 38 | |
Tumble dryer/ drying cabinet | 30 | |
Regular use of shared laundry facilities (i.e. laundry room) | 5 |