CJSF

Who owns Sustainable Development Goals? The easy answer up until now has typically been Science and Economics. The former aims to monitor climate change and solutions to sustainability while preserving our lifestyle: the progress in renewable energy is a good example. The latter seeks to finance science and find new business models. But so far they have not been able to halt climate change or bring about lasting sustainability. In brief, both natural science and economics must reinvent themselves to be part of a new way of thinking.

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Christoph Kueffer, Manuela Di Giulio, Katrin Hauser, Caroline Wiedmer

For a society to emerge in which people make money through restoration rather than through the destruction of nature, closer dialogue between sustainability science and socially diverse biodiversity conservation is needed.

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A new publication on contemporary artistic research related to maritime and global transformations.

In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics, and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a ‘planetary age.’

The volume “Maritime Poetics: from Coast To Hinterland” arose from a scholarly and artistic encounter, organized by TETI Group in 2018 in parallel to the exhibition “Hinterland: the eyes of the lighthouse, blood as a rover”, at Corner College, Zurich, curated by Professors Gabriel N. Gee and Anne-Laure Franchette.

It argues that contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land, considering complex pasts and interconnected histories, transnational flux, as well as material and immaterial borders.

Structured in four parts – Work and Leisure in the Port City; Commerce; Metabolic Pressure; and Dreamscapes – the publication brings together texts by scholars and artists, reflecting on contemporary artistic research and cultural narratives related to maritime and global transformations.

Professors Gabriel N. Gee and Caroline Wiedmer are both faculty members at Franklin University Switzerland. Professor Gee holds a PhD in contemporary art history from the Université Paris-X and teaches contemporary art history and theory, while Professor Wiedmer holds a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University and teaches comparative literature, film studies, and cultural studies.

The encounter as well as the publication have received the support of the Swiss Research Foundation.

“Maritime Poetics: from Coast To Hinterland” is available in open access on Transcript’s website; it can also be purchased in print through the publishing house.

Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Communications Gabriel Gee has recently coedited a collection of essays reflecting on the mobile ground beneath our feet, questioning the soil as both material and narrative in our interconnected territories: Mobile Soils. Texts by artists, curators, historians, engineers, environmental scientists, architects, gardeners and poets peer into the bright and dark worlds of the underground, look at memories and resilience on the ground, industry, migration and spectral presences on the overground. Throughout, authors revisit their own practice confronted to present earthly attachments and ecological pressure.

This publication is the first one of TETI Press, set up by Professor Gee himself. TETI Press furthers the activity of TETI Group through publications engaging with industrial and cultural transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Mobile Soils also also features an essay of Franklin Co-Chair of the academic division of Arts and Cultures, Professor Caroline Wiedmer, as well as an interview of Franklin Chair of the academic division of Environment, Math, Psychology and Health Professor Brack Hale by Moriah Simonds, class of 21.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the effects of regulatory focus (RF) orientation (promotion/prevention) on decisions to purchase green products. The two experimental studies conducted aimed to test whether individuals in a prevention (promotion) state were more (or less) inclined to buy green products.

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This study investigates the effect of time horizon in patterns of green consumption. Previous studies have shown that consumer behavior is influenced by an individual’s willingness to delay or expedite receiving gains and losses (i.e., take a time horizon orientation). This paper describes the effect of short-term or long-term conditions in complying with green and not-green consumption. The paper also reports the results of an experimental study showing that time horizon plays an important role in driving consumer behavior, especially when green consumption is expected.

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Interest in issues associated with environmental sustainability is continuously growing and sustainable consumption is now a mainstream topic at the top of the international public administration agenda. However, the many studies about the general inconsistency between green consumer attitudes and green consumption have not considered two individual differences that seem to be interesting in order to explain the ethical consumer attitude–intention gap: regulatory focus and time horizon.

Regulatory focus, being the strategic orientation individuals use to pursue their goals, might enhance consumers’ sense of duty towards environmental issues. Time horizon represents the consumers’ perceived time lag between their decision and its outcome, and can induce them to immediately engage in a specific behaviour. With this goal in mind, the present work illustrates the results of three experimental studies that focus on individual differences (regulatory focus and time horizon) that might influence consumers to comply with green consumption. Results show that prevention-focused individuals demonstrate a higher compliance with green behaviour, both in the short-term and in the long-term outcome horizons.

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The paper purpose is to investigate the green consumption behaviour of the Millennials generation. The paper aims to understand if all Italian Millennials are similar in terms of green consumption and if there are diferences in adopting and consuming green products. As Millennials are considered the driving generation of the sustainable movement, thanks to their lifestyle and behaviours, our study tries to comprehend whether these consumers can be considered the leading “Green Generation”.

We performed a cluster analysis, using the non-hierarchical method by applying the k-medium algorithm, segmenting Millennials. The segmentation was performed according to the reasons underlying and against green consumption. Then, green values and green consumer behaviour of the segments were analyzed. The results of our research reveal the existence of diferent clusters of Millennial consumers in terms of green attitude. Some confusion about green issues in the Millennials generation emerges, contrasting with the literature. Our results do not necessarily imply a negative attitude towards green values by Millennials, but diferent green attitudes among the clusters.

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