Who can use AI sustainably? Habitus, digital capital, and the social structuring of sustainable AI practices

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently framed as a sustainability-enabling technology, yet its environmental implications vary across users. This article examines why identical AI systems generate uneven sustainability outcomes by conceptualizing sustainable AI use as a socially stratified socio-technical practice. Integrating Bourdieu’s theory of practice with digital capital and insights from socio-technical mediation, the study treats sustainable AI behavior as shaped by embodied dispositions, normative environments, and unequal resources. Using quota-aligned survey data from the United Arab Emirates ( N  = 1040), the analysis shows that digital capital conditions the translation of environmental concern and intention into practice, while normative influence operates selectively through AI-environmental habitus and biospheric values. Rather than an attitudinal outcome, sustainable AI use emerges as a dual conversion process, interpretative and resource-based, structured by both social position and perceived system conditions. The findings contribute to debates on digital inequality and the changing conditions of action in AI-mediated environments.