The European Union funded ‘Co-creating positive and sustainable lifestyle tool with and for European citizens’ - PSLifestyle project is aiming to help close the gap between climate awareness and individual action, and to increase citizen participation in sustainability topics. We are trying to do this by engaging citizens through a digital application to collect, monitor, and analyse their environment and consumption data as well as co-research, co-develop, and support citizens to change their lifestyles. The project is building a data-driven movement with and for the citizens to enable more sustainable lifestyles across Europe - with a particular focus on eight European countries Estonia, Finland, Greece, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, and Turkey- in data collection and data sharing through the PS Lifestyle web application.
In the coming months, the project focuses on the wider outreach of the service to citizens in the partner locations as well as expanding further into other European countries.
The PSLifestyle project’s ambition is outlined by the following four objectives:
O-1: Build an innovative behaviour change and citizen science application - The PSLifestyle application - that enables European citizens to participate in generating personal sustainability data, while learning about personalised sustainable lifestyle choices.
(1.1) Develop a digital on-line application, that includes a consumption-based carbon footprint calculator, a wide range of suggestions for sustainable lifestyle, and a sustainable lifestyle planning and commitment tool. The application is based on a successful existing carbon footprint calculator.
(1.2) Create a data architecture that also allows further data set integration, with a primary focus on sustainability data related to local challenges in pilot sites
(1.3) Create a marketing and scaling up strategy for the application that will enable its sustainability beyond the project
O-2: Run eight local multi-stakeholder citizen science pilots that contribute to and promote the PSLifestyle application development, as well as the suggested sustainable living patterns that emerge through the data generated by citizens engaging with the application
(2.1) Establish eight co-creative multi-stakeholder structures (living labs) for spurring and accelerating the application uptake and innovation for citizen science in sustainable development
(2.2) Build local deployment capability of the PSLifestyle application in eight pilot countries
(2.3) Co-create and design with local stakeholders how to utilize citizen-science analytics that can shape and inform European policies, to also make visible their role and potential for achieving a higher degree of sustainable development
(2.4) Connect and work together with parallel initiatives and projects across the EU to ensure the exchange of learning and best practices
O-3: To create and make available the PSDataSet with relevant data blocks on major lifestyle areas, to enable further research and policy design beyond the project
(3.1) Set-up a data architecture and data repository, the PSDataSet, on basis of related behaviour science insights and practical observation of the lifestyles of European citizens
(3.2) Aggregate the data collected in the project into an open data set and promote its usage to support interoperability among different stakeholders and tools for exchange of future and existing data collected while providing common data exchange format
(3.3) Implement quantitative and qualitative data toolset and templates to enable institutional utilisation and citizen science while developing guidelines for collection of data of good quality
O-4: Build awareness to support and empower European citizens to act and to adopt lasting behavioural patterns for sustainable and healthy lifestyles
(4.1) Provide personalized information to citizens about their environmental impact using proven positive framing and personal motivations’-based approach.
(4.2) Provide user-specific behaviour change recommendations by building local insight and understanding of local challenges to make the application locally relevant
(4.3) Develop action plans for behaviour change, from individual to community to broader societal level
