Grassroots initiatives are considered central to sustainability transformations. Particularly in the area of sufficiency (e.g., to implement sufficiency-oriented lifestyles in the areas of nutrition, energy consumption, or mobility), bottom-up initiatives can bring about far-reaching changes in the immediate environment of the respective movement and trigger substantially broader transformations toward sustainability through niche growth, accumulation, and network formation. Well-known examples include the vegetarian, slow food, and urban agriculture movements in the area of food.

While existing research focuses particularly on analyzing the mechanisms of knowledge sharing among different groups, the motivations and visions of members in initiatives have been less extensively studied. Since the initiatives usually have limited financial and political resources to initiate change processes, social levers are crucial for them to assert their interests. In particular, it can be assumed that certain non-monetary but effective means such as shared visions, symbols and myths are resorted to in this context.

Because visions of the future are both a core identity-giving component of these movements and provide a key lever for their sustainability strategies, our goal is to capture visions of a sustainable future from grassroots initiatives.