MOCHA contributed important methodological advances. Our work was unusual in applying longitudinal approaches over periods of many years (e.g. our four-wave COVID study spanned 2020-2022). Moreover, the use of photo elicitation and longitudinal biographical interviews across three-waves was entirely new. We also worked at the forefront of computational social science. In collaboration with Nottingham University’s N/LAB, we designed a protocol for identifying key moments of change (e.g. relocation, new year) within a major retailer’s consumption dataset and assessed how these moments of change impact sustainable consumption choices. This included identifying discontinuities in location of primary shop visited to operationalise residential relocation. This highly novel big data analysis shed light on how biographical transitions impact consumption practices – an area never explored before in habits research.
MOCHA also advanced understanding about moments of change in important ways. Our work was also interdisciplinary; for example, we conducted the first review on MoC that spans the social sciences. The project was also unique in examining behaviour change across cultures – and our findings indicated very large cross-cultural variation in how life transitions impact sustainable choices. The MOCHA team was also at the forefront of identifying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on lifestyles, and in particular how it shaped low-carbon practices. MOCHA highlighted heterogeneity across moments of change and the dynamics of diverse pro-environmental behaviours; dynamics also vary across populations (e.g. genders, cultures). Existing definitions of such events under the umbrella of ‘moments of change’ may be conceptually limited; it is difficult to identify their trajectories and the extent to which events causally influence people’s lifestyles, given the constant flux of social life. The qualitative research across cultures similarly showed the wide variability in experiences of diverse moments of change, and the extent to which environmental sustainability is considered during these transitions. A key insight was that there is rarely a discrete start and end point to biographical moments of change, such as retirement or starting a family, with planning starting months or years earlier, and varying periods of subsequent adjustment. MOCHA also found unexpected impacts of COVID-19 on food practices, such as the dramatic reduction in food waste. MOCHA's WP3 work tested interventions to identify how best to exploit moments of change to achieve sustainable outcomes. This provided the unexpected insight that there may be an ‘optimal’ level of disruption for ensuring intervention efficacy; immediately following a MoC may be too disruptive, but waiting too long may miss the window of opportunity for alternating habits while they are malleable.
