Recent initiatives in science and policy to promote sustainable consumption and recommendations to enhance the German Sustainable Development Strategy in, with and by Germany

This assessment report identifies six key areas of sustainable consumption. Transforming those areas is associated with a significant, positive impact on sustainable development. In this way, those key areas lay a foundation for setting clear priorities and formulating concrete policy measures and recommendations. The report describes recent developments and relevant actors in those six fields, outlines drivers and barriers to reach a shift towards more sustainability in those specific areas, and explores international good-practice examples. In addition, overarching topics in the scientific discourse concerning sustainable consumption (e.g. collaborative economy, behavioural economics and nudging) are revealed by using innovative text-mining techniques. Subsequently, the report outlines the contributions of these research approaches to transforming the key areas of sustainable consumption. Finally, the report derives policy recommendations to improve the German Sustainable Development Strategy (DNS) in order to achieve a stronger stimulus effect for sustainable consumption.