SPILLOVER investigates how consumption patterns of 17- to 19-year old Austrians persist, are rearranged and may be modified during a biographical phase when several life events coincide: high school graduation, moving out of the parental home, doing military/civil service, taking up gainful employment, or going to university.
Project activities
Seniors are tracked during their biographical change of leaving school in a two-wave longitudinal survey. The first survey wave is completed during their final schoolyear; by the time of the second wave, male participants have concluded their military/civil service and all participants have taken up an educational or occupational path. Measures of psychological spillover mechanisms enter the analysis as explanatory factors for the degree and direction of behavioural change between first and second wave.
The learning programme is co-developed by pupils, teachers, student teachers, scientists, and the project team. The programme’s main objective is to empower young people to reflect and revise their own consumption patterns. In the pilot phase selected pilot classes familiarise themselves with the drivers and impacts of climate-relevant behaviour and conceptualise learning activities together with student teachers. In the development phase the actual learning programme is compiled, consisting of learning activities conveying background knowledge and experience, real-world projects transferring this knowledge into skills and hands-on action, and a supporting programme offering assistance and materials to teachers.
Expected results
SPILLOVER investigates psychological spillover mechanisms to explain how and why consumers adjust their actions within and between consumption domains over time. These mechanisms provide the conceptual foundation for the design of educational approaches, teaching methods and materials. For up-scaling in the Austrian school system, teaching materials are prepared.
SPILLOVER can help shaping future innovation processes and may sharpen the policy discourse towards promoting far-reaching readjustments in private consumption. Citizen engagement needs to extend from sporadic activities to a comprehensive restructuring of multiple consumption domains. SPILLOVER is dedicated to a participatory approach of engaging and enabling schoolchildren and shall lay the groundwork for future fruitful collaboration between science, education and civil society.