Promoting Pro-environmental Behaviour - Essay Example

Promoting Pro-environmental Behaviour Introduction Right from the onset, it is important to that human beings are the cause of their environmental problems and therefore have a control over them including the solutions to the problem. For example, there is concrete evidence that giving people feedback information on the consumption of electricity or gas may make them adopt efforts aimed at reducing that consumption or wastage (Abrahamse et al., 2005). The question that therefore arises is how human beings can promote pro-environmental behaviour in the course of their daily activities or lives. Those charged with making policies usually attempt to change the behaviour of persons in any given community oft using persuasive mechanisms and these may appear in the form of announcements through broadcasts, newspapers or mails amongst other form of media. The effectiveness of these information or messages presented in a persuasive manner may not be certain or even when they are persuaded, the effectiveness or the potency of the measures may come into question. Thus merely persuading human beings to adopt certain behaviour or act in a certain manner in the environment may not result in the desired result or the expectations of the information or the message (Dickerson et al., 2005). According to research, there is limited support for the notion that having a collective action amongst persons is a predictor of the said people to engage in the said intention (Hornsey et al., 2006). This is so due to the narrow definition of effectiveness as at times it is judged through other criteria such as whether it has an influence on other parties including third parties, opposing ideas and the expressing values. Further, most programs that are aimed at fostering sustainable behaviour are based on models that have been found to be limited or inadequate in psychological research. This makes it difficult to promote pro-environmental behaviour change as little attention is made to ensure that psychological knowledge is made accessible to those charged with designing environmental programs. This research paper will make an attempt at presenting a framework for promoting pro-environmental behaviour and how they can be carried out as well as the limitations that may be met in attempts to incorporate psychological change. This will help us understand how we can have a positive impact on sustainable behaviour in order to change the environment. Promoting Pro-environmental Behaviour Cialdini et al (2006) states that in order to succeed in the mobilization of an action aimed at addressing a social problem, those charged with giving public information or communication must endeavour to include normative information that must also be persuasive. The messages will only be effective if they normalize the desirable conduct or intervention that is aimed at changing the environmental behaviour or promoting it. From an environmental context, these researchers examined the implications of their interventions on visitors who were discouraged and at times punished for stealing petrified wood from Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. The messages that they passed had descriptive norms of the level of behavior by others or injunctive norms that described the disapproval by others on the theft of such wood. The results showed that when descriptive normative information was used against the visitors, the theft increased while injunctive normative information reduced the chances of the theft. Therefore, this study confirmed that normative messages usually have a positive impact as a means of intervening against undesirable conducts in the environment. As already shown above, holding pro-environmental, attitudes do not necessarily lead to pro-environmental behaviours or what is referred to as ‘value-action’ gap, which acts as an obstacle in implementation of interventions. These obstacles may be internal or external in nature and has an impact and act simultaneously in determining and promoting the behaviour of a person. The implications of the external obstacles is that the social context must be right in order to attain the desired behaviour and therefore those concerned with making policies must aim at changing the society as well as target individuals with interventions for change. Therefore achieving a wider change for the society is needed to catalyze, support as well as reinforce pro-environmental change in behaviour beyond the individual but for the whole society. The internal obstacles to the behaviour of the individual include agency or the belief of the person as an act of change, the norms as well as the habits, which are mental and dispositional in nature. Agency may denote the belief of the individual in his capacity to be an act of change in order to make a meaningful difference to a situation in the environment. It means that the individual could see a course of action through and his belief that the action could make a difference, while norms denote the fact that the behaviour of an individual is determined by his sense of appropriateness. Habit on the other hand is a psychological strategy employed by the individual to prevent him from dedicating too much conscious though on an act that is usually repeated and can be the standard operating procedure of an individual. In order to influence individual behavioural change, there are certain core principles that policy-makers must adopt in order to design pro-environmental behaviour changes that target the individual only. One important principle is to use multiple intervention types to address the factors that should be made to work in a combination, as the limiting factors are usually numerous, varying in terms of actor and situation and affect each other. The policy makers must understand the situation from the perspective of the actor while when the limiting factors are psychological in nature, it is important to apply the human choice process. Get the attention of the individual and male few cognitive demands and apply principles of community management. In a study conducted by Abrahamse et al (2005) to review intervention studies aimed at household energy consumption where thirty-eight research findings were reviewed and multiple conclusions made with regard to promoting pro-environmental behaviour in the psychological way. This research found that interventions usually have varying degrees of success and information only results to increased knowledge that is not necessarily translate as changes in behaviour. It also found that rewards given out in the study encouraged the conservation of energy though for a short period. In this research study performed to determine the social and environmental psychology, it was found that the human behaviour or susceptibility to change would be determined through may other factors, some of them internal while others are external. The study also evaluated the results in terms of the extent of behavioural change due to the intervention, the behavioural determinants, how effects were attributed to the intervention and the length of the time of the effect. It confirmed that behavioural change in the environment varies with many factors and how those that it is aimed at and their environment perceive the intervention. Van (2009) also confirmed in his study that most local and global environmental challenges are caused due to the competing private and collective interests and their narrow economic interests with little consideration of their personal motivate people. This calls for certain initiatives in designing components for environmental interventions, which include information, identity, institutions and incentives, which must be feasible in any chosen environment. The policy makers must therefore address the conditions beyond the individual that may be constraining the pro-environmental choice while he should also set realistic expectations about the outcomes. They must also continuously monitor the responses and adjust the programs accordingly while staying within the bounds of the individual’s tolerance for interventions as well as use participatory methods of decision-making. This means that individuals should not be compelled to modify their behaviour but encouraged to make changes they themselves see as possible for them. In environmentally significant behaviour interventions, it is important to identify the target behaviour, analyse it to identify the responsible actors and actions and thereafter identify the causal variables and establish how relevant they are in ending or changing the behaviour. At organizational level, the change may be in two models, this may be through incremental change or transformational change, and this depends on the level of control or how the change is devolved. In programs that are aimed at seeking incremental change, the change is usually driven from the centre of the team through innovation and implementation across the whole organization. In transformational change, the change is seen as a partner and successor in improving the environmental performance of a business and is important in addressing crises that affect the business in the environment. Transformational change suggests that the organizations whose practices and policies are already close to the pro-environmental good practice only require incremental change in order to sustain performance in its environment. Conclusion In conclusion, we can state what Sparks et al (2010) discuss as social concerns that are important for a sustainable environmental lifestyle that are affected by the problems of the global environment. The study by Sparks and other researchers have confirmed that manipulation by a person conducts on his own self as well as the beliefs on the environment leads to lower denial and greater perception of that person’s involvement in changing that particular environment. This confirms what has been discussed earlier that an individual must be able to believe in himself first before attempting any change in the environment, as the envisaged changes to the behaviour are always a manifestation of the individual behaviour. It is important therefore, that the behaviour to be changed is identified prior, examine the factors that underlie the behaviour, design interventions for changing the behaviour and thereafter evaluate the effects of the intervention. References Abrahamse, W., Steg, L., Vlek, C., & Rothengatter, T. (September 01, 2005). A review of intervention studies aimed at household energy conservation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 3, 273-291. Cialdini, R. B., Demaine, L. J., Sagarin, B. J., Barrett, D. W., Rhoads, K., & Winter, P. L. (January 01, 2006). Managing social norms for persuasive impact. Social Influence, 1, 1, 3-15. Dickerson, C., Thibodeau, R., Aronson, E., & Miller, D. (June 01, 1992). Using Cognitive Dissonance to Encourage Water Conservation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 22, 11, 841-854. Hornsey, M.J., Blackwood, L., Louis, W., Fielding, K, Mavor, K., Morton, T., O’Brien, A., Paasonen, K-E, Smith, J. & White, K.M. (2006). Why do people engage in collective action? Revisiting the role of perceived effectiveness. Blackwell Publishing. Sparks, P., Jessop, D. C., Chapman, J., & Holmes, K. (January 01, 2010). Pro-environmental actions, climate change, and defensiveness: do self-affirmations make a difference to peoples motives and beliefs about making a difference?. The British Journal of Social Psychology / the British Psychological Society, 49, 553-68. Van, V. M. (June 01, 2009). Averting the Tragedy of the Commons: Using Social Psychological Science to Protect the Environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 3, 169-173. Read More