Urban public transport companies and strategies to promote sustainable consumption practices

Development policy adopted by governments and companies increasingly pays attention to issues of sustainability. One dominant strategy emphasizes behavioural change vis-a-vis technological innovation. However, often attempts at changing individual and collective behaviour is ineffective. One of the main reasons for this failure is that policy makers do not consider the gap between values and practices. We propose to address this gap by using theories of practice, which give centrality to reflexivity in the analysis of practices and have long been applied in research on environmental behaviours. We will use the example of the transport sector, which has long been a major contributor to climate change and technological improvements have not been enough to make up for the growth of impacts. Focusing on the role of a transport company in promoting sustainability through behavioural change, the main goal of this article is to analyse transport practices from the supplier's perspective. Choices made by transport companies towards 'green' technologies are strongly limited by available economic resources, by the public policies and by the fuel market. Results also reinforce the idea that the economic dimension constrains the strategies to reduce environmental impacts.