Does environmental information overcome practice compartmentalisation and change consumers' behaviours?

This paper questions the long-held paradigm of consumers' rationality as well as its corresponding policy tool, the supply of information. Theoretical considerations as well as empirical evidence from a research on residential energy consumption in Belgium show that both environmental information – namely on climate change – and customised advice to save energy at home are neither just taken in as such by consumers nor translated into corresponding practices. In consumerist societies, practice compartmentalisation and moods are indeed normalised mechanisms for not adopting ‘green’ lifestyles that would threaten social normality as defined in valued networks.