Green Practices: Approaches to Investigation

Green Practices:
Approaches to Investigation


Zakharova O.V.

Сand. Sci. (Philos.), Assoc. Prof., Department of State and Municipal Government, Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia. o.v.zakharova@utmn.ru

Payusova T.I.

Assoc. Prof., Department of Information Security, Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia. t.i.payusova@utmn.ru

Akhmedova I.D.

Assoc. Prof., Institute of Oil and Gas; Yugra State University idakhmedova@mail.ru

Suvorova L.G.

Cand. Sci. (Philos.), Assoc. Prof., Chair of Philosophy, Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia. l.g.suvorova@utmn.ru

ID of the Article:


The research was funded by RFBR and Tyumen Region, project No. 20-410-720012.

Rubric: Methodology and methods of sociological studies

For citation:

Zakharova O.V., Payusova T.I., Akhmedova I.D., Suvorova L.G. Green Practices: Approaches to Investigation. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2021. No 4. P. 25-36


 Full Text.


Abstract

The climate agenda forces governments to change their political goals and institutional frameworks for socio-economic development. The Russian Federation is also moving towards sustainable development. However, everyday green practices of citizens are not sufficiently studied as part of this process. We define green practices as activities defined as eco-friendly. The article is mainly based on the theory of practices. We focus on analyzing everyday green practices of citizens to identify the number of people involved in these practices, as well as the links between practices, and the most popular practices. We use social network analysis, such as search engine, and map service, and social graph construction. We conclude: 1) green practices can be identified using search queries for the keywords “eco-friendly”, “natural”, “bio”, “eco”, etc. 204 green practices were identified in Tyumen, 68 of them have groups in VKontakte. 2) 131,819 participants of green groups indicated Tyumen as their place of residence. 96,867 participants belong to 15 most influential groups. 3) Green practices are clustered around four most important topics from the users‘ point of view: animals, organic products, green-markets, and separate waste collection. There are strong communications between practices, even if they are from different clusters. 4) The classification of green practices by types of green activity was justified. Analysis of the social graph demonstrates the willingness of citizens to participate in ecofriendly practices, changing the urban environment, and political life. The findings can be used for decision making and development of civil initiatives.


Keywords
green practice; theory of practices; data mining; social network data analytics; VKontakte (VK); graph model; social network communities

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