Move your money? Sustainability transitions in regimes and practices in the UK retail banking sector

Seyfang, Gill and Gilbert-Squires, Amber (2019) Move your money? Sustainability transitions in regimes and practices in the UK retail banking sector. Ecological Economics, 156. pp. 224-235. ISSN 0921-8009

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sociotechnical transitions,sustainable banking,ethical banking,social practices,innovation niches,multi-level perspective,niche-building,values-based banking
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Science, Society and Sustainability Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2018 11:31
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2025 23:56
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/68304
DOI:	10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.09.014

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