Many environmental problems cross national borders and call into question the traditional views of citizenship by confronting belonging and community by posing questions like for whom are we responsible—do we need to be responsible for our “ecological footprints” [9] wherever the ecological consequences arise?

The development of this article is mainly based on the historical, cultural and political context of Sweden, which may limit some of the conclusions, at the same time as the concept presented is assumed to be useful for analysing different political and national contexts. In Sweden, the municipalities have been given the responsibility to create the proper conditions to comply with the global and national goals, and households have been mentioned as important actors or micro-institutions in efforts to reach a more sustainable future through participation [10]. It is not only in policies for sustainable development that we find an emphasis on the individual, they are present in academic theories too, as will be shown later in the text. In the 1990s, green political theories took a deliberative turn, with a heavy focus on wide participation in verbal communication to solve what has been framed as shared environmental problems [11,12]. The environmental problems created by individual consumption cannot be governed by the same means as are used to control industrial emissions, namely, permits and control measures. Due to this perception among authorities, citizens, often in their role as consumers, are anticipated to be informed and educated about how they can change their lifestyles and habits to make them more environmentally friendly [13]. However, the same authorities do not considered information to be enough. This is how the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency expresses the matter:

In this quotation we can see how a Swedish authority expresses themselves—something which the individual actors have to relate to. The interaction between actors and structures is emphasized in structuration theory, and the policy instruments are part of the political structure wherein citizens act. The ideal of voluntarism is central to many green theories, as are expectations of harmonious cooperation for the common good (an improved environment) and reliance on a high level of shared values and commitment. However,

The tension between voluntarism and force emphasizes the question of how to make citizens change their practices with policy instruments, which concerns the circumstances and incentives that facilitate environmentally friendly practices and the constraints that exist. Because many activities are actually politically relevant, the notion of when a person is an “active” or “passive” citizen has been challenged. The issue of what householders do deliberately and/or “thoughtless” comes to the fore, emphasizing the concept of “decisions” when arranging everyday life [5]. In this text I take as a point of departure that no matter what citizens do (or do not do) they/we maintain a relationship with the environment through everyday practices, and thus we need a concept that can incorporate different approaches among householders.

Sustainable development builds on what has been called “voluntary simplicity,” i.e., decreased consumption and de-materialization [15,16]. What we consume has consequences for others through our ecological footprint, so consumption is political [4,9]. By means of changed consumption patterns through active choice, consumers are expected to contribute to more environmentally sustainable production practices Various studies demonstrate, however, that our resource consumption is continuously increasing [17,18]. Being able to purchase whatever one wishes in “consumer culture” is based on the norm of convenience and quality of life, while refraining from consuming is considered a sacrifice.

Here the aim is to understand what it means to be environmentally friendly, what is called construction of environmental responsibility. The question should not be interpreted in a predetermined moralistic sense, confirming that individual citizens ought to have responsibility [4], but rather focus on the construction aspect, and how householders view and reason about their role. The responsibility to solve environmental problems can be divided into dealing with the causes and preventing them from arising, or managing existing problems through adaptation. A person may consider someone else to be responsible for causing environmental problems, but it is her citizen responsibility to help in solving them. On the other hand, it is equally possible to argue that her everyday activities cause environmental problems, but others—like corporations or politicians- are the ones who need to solve them. Suggestions for what to do to solve environmental problems may also differ.

This article focuses on practices, and investigates the activities and motivations of householders concerning their relationship with the environment. A central point of departure is that social, material and institutional structures both govern and facilitate individual action, so research should focus on the relationship between structures and agency [19,20]. With structuration theory, the aim is to analyze the opportunities and constraints householders perceive in their everyday activities in relation to sustainable development. Praxis is at the intersection between saying and doing [8], and can be used to examine how people justify their activities.

The focus on agency relates to being able to act otherwise or to intervene in the world. The structural properties of social systems create certain opportunities for action at the same time as they restrict others: they are both enabling and constraining [8]. The concept of constraint is used to discuss the factors that limit the available options for action; they are not unlimited [8]. The structures are both the preconditions for action and the outcome. This is where structuration theory can face criticism, since it posits structure as both the cause and effect of phenomena [21].

The constraint concept is taken to mean that some resources are, or are perceived to be, limited or limiting. Access to resources, such as tools, knowledge, or technology, affects the activities humans believe they can do. Culturally created expectations and obligations may be taken for granted that they are perceived as obstructions to changing practices (e.g., to incorporate new environmentally friendly activities, or changing existing ones). There may be a discrepancy between the expectations of the surrounding society and the perceived ability of the individual.

In everyday life, humans participate in a continuous flow of action, where far from all intentions result in the intended outcomes. Intentional activities may have unintended consequences, as well as the other way around: Few people intentionally aim to destroy the environment, but it can be the unintentional consequence of everyday life in which people go about their routines. Human agency should thus not stop at intentionality.

Several academics have shown an interest in the practice of everyday life [22], and suggested ways to register and articulate ordinary experience methodologically. The ability to make the everyday life “strange” deals with the relationship between routines and interruptions “that might allow for the everyday to emerge” [23]. However, it is not possible to relate to everything that is going on around us: we cannot perceive it all. In her book, Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience [18] Elizabeth Shove directs our focus towards inconspicuous consumption and materiality, and “the intangible, immaterial and invisible services they make possible” [18]. We are thus not only consuming natural resources through everyday life. In certain contexts, like planning and architecture, some attempts have been made to “build” environmental care into dwellings, but with rather mixed results since the inhabitants are using their “agency” when they move in and start to make home [24]. In this sense, the environment or surrounding does not determine human agency.

Individual actions contribute at an aggregate level. But it is difficult to investigate how individual actions affect others directly and actually to demand individual accountability from a juridical perspective; it is easy to free-ride. From a perspective offered by feminists among others who focus on difference, it is possible to argue that richer segments of the population have the option of buying their freedom, by using their economic assets to move to safer or less risk-prone places or to purchase less hazardous products [25]. When feminists incorporated women’s (everyday) lives and domestic routines into the picture, and argued that the personal is political, they provoked a transformation of politics itself [23]. The attention given here to gender as a form of difference thus has a form of historical legacy in everyday studies, and is not intended to neglect other forms of differences like ethnic, age and socio-economic such, but adhere to recent developments that highlights that differences may intersect. This shifts the focus towards a differentiated humanity.

Previous studies of environmental activities in households have examined individuals’ environmental attitudes and norms and their relationship to behavior [26]; performed life cycle analysis of grocery consumption and household waste [15]; studied unpaid household work and division of labor [27]; household use and access to technology and socio–technical systems [18,28]; time use [29]; and how households use and “recontextualise” knowledge into practice in everyday life [30]. While many previous studies have investigated green activists [25,31] and those living in communal ecological arrangements [27], there is still a need to investigate people who fall outside these categories. Many studies have focused on specific activities, and attitudes that concern sustainable development, such as choice of mode of transportation, waste management, and purchases of environmentally labeled groceries. These studies often have a narrow approach to isolated phenomena [32]. The concept ecological action space attempts to incorporate everyday life, and the yet underresearched area of how environmentally motivated activities relate to all other household activities. Here household activities are taken to be all activities that are not paid labor. Using this definition draws a multitude of activities into the purview.

Through the concept ecological action space the attempt is to come to terms with the relationship and encounter between actors and structures, and focus on what happens in the interaction. It has already been mentioned that the plentiful literature on environmental and sustainability discourse has come to focus on individuals and their choices and agency. Even if the idea of individual responsibility exists in society, many times householders also know how to relieve themselves of the responsibility through different “excuses” [38,39], they relate to the (often moralistic) environmental discourse. Specific segments of activities can excuse other—less environmentally friendly—activities that are considered as interchangeable. An example could be the statement: “I drive my car far too much, but I do recycle”, or the idea that purchasing eco labeled milk is “doing enough”. In other political contexts, citizens would not necessarily have “bad conscience” for something that the Swedes interviewed in this study expressed.

Individualization has influenced many areas of contemporary society [19], not just the sustainability discourse. However, there are different aspects of the phenomena; some researchers focus on the increased autonomy of individuals and their increased control of their life histories and independence from large collectives, including self-realization [40], while others emphasize increased individual responsibility and accountability [1,29]. The meaning of individualization is central here due to the focus in policies, theories and society on individual responsibility for the environment [1,4]. The view of individualization as autonomy conceals all the social relationships, systems and structures on which individuals are dependent through unpaid life-sustaining work in the private sphere, such as domestic production, reproduction, caring, and family relationships [4,29]. Placing the responsibility for change on individuals diverts attention from structural aspects, such as governments, technological systems, society, and institutions [29,33,41].

Both Beck and Giddens argue that individuals have no choice but to choose how to act in our current society [42,43]. In this light, individualization also means that individuals have an obligation to justify their decisions, as does a person who works for a company that is causing environmental destruction [43], which relates to the assumption by Giddens in the initial quotation. To analyze this, we can use Giddens’ concept “rationalization of activities” of how people make sense of their activities [8]. Rationalization of activities concerns how people talk about and reflect on what they do. This connects what they do, and why they act. It is when asked to define what they know they could do in their households to counteract the environmental problems and in their explanations of why they do not perform these activities, that householders unveil constraints. All ideas for sustainable activities that are suggested in governmental policies that householders could perform, have to be incorporated in their everyday lives, and adjusted to all other goals and rationalities.

Households and families have often been placed on equal terms in sociological studies. A household’s internal structures and workings both create and are recreated by larger-scale cultural, economic, and political processes [44]. The problematic aspects of defining “household” are the customary emphasis on negotiations, division of labor, and organization [45], which are difficult to apply to people living on their own. Here I argue that since so many people now live on their own, a household has to be liberated from a direct reference to families, at the same time as it has to be able to incorporate family functions and intergenerational negotiations. Parenting for example, tends to change household dynamics. As seen in the definition of sustainable development, hope is also placed in the “future generation”, i.e., children and schooling. The concept ecological action space is not limited to a specific group of people, family size nor specific living conditions or isolated activities—but the everyday context. In that way we can notice how certain environmentally motivated activities are seen as viable or impossible to perform, how people are negotiating or prioritizing between them, etc.

To economize resources is one of the most central definitions of a household, and can be connected to the physical building/dwelling and the material and energy-related resources used in it, such as electricity, water, and fuel. When more and more people tend to live on their own [46], it implies increasing numbers of households and dwellings. This has been connected to increases in the use of material and energy consumption, through “a steadily rising number of goods and services provided by physical networks” [47], and socio-technological systems. The dwelling is a context in which people, depending on the type of housing arrangement (e.g., small house or apartment, subletting or ownership), can have an impact on and create conditions for acting in more (or less) environmentally friendly ways. The decision for how to live is a decision which in this sense has a form of a path dependence [41], since the householder will have different possibilities to influence the physical structures.

Information is often said to be a key to changing peoples’ routines and lifestyles, but there is no linear correlation between increased information and knowledge, and changed practices [26,30,48,]. Information and knowledge are used, implemented, and changed in a household context, becoming part of how household members in cooperation “transfer … facts into practice” [30]. In this transfer process, previous experience is just as important as available resources. The available information has to be considered relevant to behaviour and meaningful to the householders [26,30]. More knowledge may increase one’s future options or choices.

The concept ecological action space is useful in investigations about how actors perceive their role in creating and solving environmental problems, and what actions they take in light of this. The concept is thus empirical rather than normative. Relevant questions for a study about ecological action space are: What activities are considered environmentally friendly? How do the actors conceive of their opportunities to act in environmentally friendly ways and what constraints are there? How do actors conceive of responsibilities for the environment, and how do they (attempt to) exert political influence? These questions are relevant not just for outspoken activists.

There is a need to “politicize the private sphere”, Dobson argues [4]. The private arena of household activities is as much a sphere for citizenship as the public arena, and thereby expands citizenship. The way feminists challenged the demarcation between private and public, in the 1960s and 1970s, has now been extended to other matters, such as sorting household waste and choice of mode of transportation. Through these connections, the household is included in the political sphere and is not considered solely a private domain. One of Dobson’s main arguments is that citizens are already expected to “undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms”, and many public policies rely on responsible personal lifestyles [4]. Ecological citizenship is permeated by the ideal of individuals who do not act out of self-interest for monetary or material benefits, but out of virtue.

Ecological citizenship has received valid criticism on several counts. It places too much emphasis on individual responsibility and relies on extensive personal contributions, while neglecting the everyday preconditions of individual action [29,49,50]. One expectation as to what individuals and householders should do as ecological citizens concerns “the burdensome task of seeking, classifying, verifying, and updating” knowledge on what is ecologically sound or risky [51]. Another criticism is that the model relies too much on “optimistic voluntarism” [50]. By applying the concept of ecological action space, I will attempt to come to grips with this second criticism, by including constraints.

Societies are not “unified collectivities,” When policies favoring sustainable development and ecology require that individuals take responsibility for the environment, it is important to investigate who precisely undertakes this responsibility, and who is accountable and affected [52]. Human actors are always embodied and embedded [52]. Women have generally been responsible for the household and the private sphere [25]. Knowledge and concern for the environment, as well as risk perception, can thus be gendered [52]. Barry goes as far as claiming that “being an environmental citizen is … a part-time occupation” [49]. MacGregor [29] has made fundamental and valid criticism of the “male-centeredness” of ecological citizenship. Policies that are gender blind may simply mean more work for mothers [28], and rely on privatized and feminized caring. As MacGregor emphasizes, we have to look at the time needed to perform the green, unpaid household activities that are suggested, and how that will interact with the increased participation and time spent in the public domain in deliberative democratic activities [29]. Ecological citizenship is a normative ideal, which needs to be analysed empirically from a household perspective, taking account of the interactions and negotiations between members and others, and the everyday activities and how we recreate (un)sustainable practices through ordinary and routinized practices that are taken for granted [18].

Since sustainable development has focused on participation in everyday activities, we should ask how to participate? Everyday life is composed of a myriad of activities, and in order to analyze the environmental effects the researcher has to focus on the details of specific activities, like how to wash clothes for example (what washing machine is used, what temperature, what detergent and softener, how are the clothes dried, who takes on the responsibility of washing, etc.). All the different possible choices for how to carry out the household activities make up an intricate and complex web that makes it difficult to measure who is more or less “sustainable” or environmentally friendly in the continuous weaving. Spaargaren argues that individuals do not choose what products to consume in isolation, but rather within “social arrangements” [32]. These “appears to have been composed of millions of individual decisions freely made by environmentally conscious households …[but] individual choices would not have done them a bit of good if the town leaders had not decided on sustainable building programs … [and] systems” [53]. This quotation emphasizes the “embeddedness of social action in socio-technical networks” [32], and is furthermore a good example of the interaction between individuals, and systems. Ecological action space pays attention to the situatedness of practice. Using structuration theory the concept highlights how actors rely on different systems in order to perform environmentally friendly activities, like recycling systems, eco-labels on food and products, public means of transportation, and so-called “green” energy that companies supply. This contributes with a more complex picture when discussing the individualization of responsibility for the environment. These systems reduce the complexity by facilitating choices, and may recreate structures. The ecological action space in this meaning has a place, a materiality, and depending on how the householders are situated, certain opportunities will seem viable. Structuration theory (in distinction from for example path dependence which could have been an option [41]) mainly focuses on structures in the sense of being social rules and culture. But structures have materiality which for the householders’ ecological action space means that it relates to the walls and windows, energy systems, water taps, products and technical appliances, which nonetheless have immaterial aspects like comfort etc. It was this interaction that made structuration theory seems a viable as a base for the concept.

Citizens can get involved at different stages of the policy process, and may participate in decision-making regarding new paths towards sustainable development before a policy is determined or implemented [32], or in the legitimization and implementation of existing policies through their everyday activities and lifestyles. A central tenet in environmental studies of “participation” has been the connection to different forms of participation and the predilection for social protest, for example, in demonstrations [4], political consumption, buycotting, and boycotting [41], and civil disobedience and culture jamming [20], where the capitalist system is often at the center of the criticism, based on the analysis that it is the main cause of environmental destruction. These forms of activism have been considered as different from traditional parliamentary participation through voting and legislative change. Now participation has reached beyond traditional political arenas and reshaped both the actual political playing field and political theory [36].

When investigating the ideal of increased individual participation, the central concerns are citizens’ self-perceived ability to participate and whether they believe that what they do matters, sometimes called “political efficacy”. Putnam [54] refers to an ideal of collective mobilization that is distinct from individualized action, such as recycling waste or purchasing ecological products, not being considered collective action even if a great many people perform it.

The interchangeable use of the concepts householder, citizen, and consumer is central to understand sustainable development, and ecological action space in our contemporary society. The vision of “Small is Beautiful” is considered to create opportunities to act in the role of (non)consumer, since the central issue is whether we emphasize choosing the right products or the amounts of goods consumed, the latter alternative implying that a person may abstain from consuming. While some academic disciplines view consumer power as a form of political action, others consider it controversial to claim that consumption choices are examples of civic engagement [1,55]. Norén says that politically conscious consumer choices are “the little individual’s opportunity to make her/his voice heard, and to feel solidarity, but without having to get engaged in formal organizations or spend time in lengthy meetings” [36] However, reducing citizenship to consumer action ignores the possibilities to work through government and traditional political processes [14,29].

Consumer studies have shown that there are culturally defined expectations of women: “women are apt to feel guilty; their compulsory feminine altruism is thereby exploited for the public (and increasingly corporate) good.” [29] However, Micheletti states from a somewhat different point of view, that “women have historically been excluded from institutions of the public sphere … Consumer choice was … a site for women to participate in politics … a site for their struggle for public recognition. Active political consumerism empowered women as citizens” [55]. Here political consumption is viewed as one of a range of ways in which the householder can act politically.