Move your money? Sustainability Transitions in Regimes and Practices in the UK Retail Banking Sector

Gill Seyfang and Amber Gilbert-Squires

Ecological Economics, 2019, vol. 156, issue C, 224-235

Abstract: We present and test a new conceptual framework for understanding sustainable transitions in co-evolutionary sociotechnical systems. We apply this in the first study of sustainable transitions in UK retail banking. This system has suffered recently from banking crises, and links to environmentally-sensitive industries such as fossil fuels. Sustainability-focused values-based banks are a potential solution, but have had little impact on mainstream banking systems. We aim to understand the constraints on a potential transition and how to overcome them. Our new approach identifies the intersections between transitions in regimes (using the multi-level perspective MLP) and transitions in practices (using social practice theory SPT), two competing conceptual frameworks in the literature. We ask: what are the intersections between transitions in the banking regime and banking practices, and how may critical points of constraint be unlocked to become points of opportunity, thereby aiding a transition to more sustainable banking systems? We present new empirical findings from a mixed-method case study of the UK banking sector and two values-based banks in particular. Interventions for growing sustainable banking are identified and we demonstrate the added-value of the combined approach through indicating strategies for unlocking the transformative potential of sustainable innovations.

Keywords: Sociotechnical transitions; Sustainable banking; Ethical banking; Social practices; Innovation niches; Multi-Level Perspective; Niche-building; Values-based banking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:156:y:2019:i:c:p:224-235

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.09.014

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