Abstract
This chapter introduces empirical social research on social milieus, and why lifestyles are of interest to Living Lab research. We present the results of a milieu analysis for Living Lab research in Bottrop. We enrich the findings from the milieu analysis by describing the influence of lifestyles on heating practices, combining a representative statistical analysis for Germany with in-depth qualitative interviews of Living Lab participants. When it comes to heating practices, lifestyles expressing higher material wealth and socio-economic status show meanings associated with comfort or convenience rather than financial reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
We consider social milieus to circumscribe a group of people who share a common lifestyle. In this sense, we refer to one’s social milieu and lifestyle interchangeably in this chapter.
- 2.
See e.g. Sinus (vgl. http://www.sinus-institut.de/loesungen/sinus-milieus.html); Sigma (http://www.sigma-online.com/de/SIGMA_Milieus) und sociodimensions (http://www.sociodimensions.com/files/milieus_2.pdf).
- 3.
The Living Lab research in Bottrop comprises the results from the projects SusLabNWE and EnerTransRuhr. The project EnerTransRuhr follows up on the work done in SusLabNWE. We integrated data collection and data analysis of both projects in order to give a more comprehensive picture of the Living Lab research in the Ruhr area and Bottrop, respectively. Whereas the milieu analysis is foremost based on the data collection and analysis in SusLabNWE, the presented findings on the influence of lifestyles on heating behaviour is mainly done in EnerTransRuhr. We acknowledge the support in EnerTransRuhr by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through a grant from the funding priority ‘Social–Ecological Research’ (grant number 01UN1205A).
- 4.
The quantitative insight research has been conducted in EnerTransRuhr. The findings are given in Liedtke et al. (2014) as well.
- 5.
Prototyping was not finished when this chapter was written. We decided to not show preliminary results and unfinished work.
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Buhl, J., Greiff, K., Baedeker, C., Liedtke, C. (2017). Analysing Social Milieus and Lifestyles—Their Contribution to a Better Understanding of Heating Practices. In: Keyson, D., Guerra-Santin, O., Lockton, D. (eds) Living Labs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33527-8_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33527-8_19
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