On 7 April 2025, the first Brown-Bag session of the new summer semester took place with the title "SHIFTing Towards Sustainable Fashion: Are We Ready to Embrace Green Sacrifices for Greener Consumption?". The speaker was Jyri Hoffrén, doctoral candidate at the University of Eastern Finland, who gave exciting insights into his ongoing research on sustainable consumption and fashion.
The core of the presentation was the SHIFT framework he uses, which describes five central influencing factors on sustainable consumer behaviour: social influences, habit formation, self-perception, emotions & cognition and descriptiveness. The concept of "green sacrifice", which goes beyond purely financial aspects, took centre stage. Hoffrén understands this to mean personal investments such as sacrificing convenience, quality or enjoyment in favour of an environmentally conscious lifestyle.
The presentation led to a lively discussion on the question of how consumers can be motivated to adopt sustainable behaviour in the long term. A key point was that not only knowledge, but above all emotional attachment and social support are crucial in order to perceive "green sacrifices" as worthwhile.
