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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Normality against Sustainability - Mobility practices of well-to-do households

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By focusing on the daily and leisure mobility of well-to-do people in Finland, this study contributes to the discordant discussion on the sustainability of well-to-do consumers, whose consumption levels are relatively the highest, and concerns whether they are both aware of environmental matters and willing to pay for environmental protection. The interview analysis revealed that, despite general knowledge of environmental issues, sustainability is not relevant to daily practices, and the well-to-do studied here are not to any significant degree engaged in sustainable mobility practices, but in a complex organization of daily life. This study also shows that, while there is a shared understanding of saving money and saving time, ‘living according to one's means’ and having more money results in more travel, for instance. Furthermore, repetition and being used to a certain way of doing things resist change in ‘normal’ mobility practices, such as car-driving and travel by plane, to which dispersed and incoherent policy measures, as well as the inconvenience of alternatives, further contribute. Doing sustainability is mostly viewed as an inconvenience not contributing to personal or family well-being, and as requiring time. Allocating time for it is not prioritized when organizing a hectic professional life and active leisure time. These findings set a further challenge for the pursuit of sustainable mobility, as they accentuate the need to recognize the forceful nature of ‘normal’ practices co-evolving with technologies and policies in transforming the unsustainable matters of course, as well as the need for coherent, strong and integrated policy measures. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment