This article contributes to current debates on (un)sustainable mobility by re-conceptualising everyday travel as a set of consumption practices. Treating physical mobility as ‘consumption of distance’ with considerable social, ecological and economic consequences, the article’s theoretical focus moves beyond conventional approaches that have hitherto dominated transport research and policy in Europe and beyond. In addition, it demonstrates how a carefully operationalised practice-theoretical approach can shed new light on the social and material contingency of human (travel) behaviour. By transforming qualitative evidence from Ireland into an innovative typology of commuting practices, this article captures the importance of intermeshing social and material contexts for people’s everyday consumption of distance. Overall, we seek to add to the already significant body of literature that evaluates the suitability of practice-theoretical core concepts to the empirical study of everyday life.

This paper argues for a disaggregation of pro-environmental behavior into habitual and occasional behavior. The former captures routine everyday activities such as regularly buying organic food or habitually conserving water. The latter describes occasional or once-off activities such as installing insulation and purchasing energy-efficient household appliances. Drawing on a survey of 1500 households in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that developed both behavioral and attitudinal indices to investigate household consumption, we group respondents according to their scoring on each index. Results show that the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of households that report habitual pro-environmental behavior differ significantly from those that engage in once-off actions. This clearly impacts on environmental and sustainability policy, most notably the financial incentivization of sustainable consumption. Moreover, significant social sustainability issues arise, with rewards for once-off activities disproportionately benefiting better-off households while those who engage in routine pro-environmental behavior tend to face higher costs