ENST20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Literature Review
24 May 2018
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LECTURE 9: ENCOURAGING
SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIOUR
• How to utilise knowledge and theories to encourage sustainable behaviour
• Ethical, philosophical and social dimensions to behaviour change
• Under what circumstances are you happy to change your behaviour, and what helps the transition to
change
• Education and information alone do not change behaviour (Schultz, 2011)
o Environmental change promoted through education - yet not an effective method
Community-Based Social Marketing (Mckenzie-Mohr, 2000)
• Key principles:
o An alternative to information based campaigns
o Use small scale, community based initiatives
• More effective than large scale information campaigns
o No-coercive, aim to encourage voluntary change
o Objective is to remove barriers to change
o Use multiple interventions to remove (likely) multiple barriers to behaviour
• Grounded in research spoke about last week - grounded in social psychology, yet writing about it
accessible
• Process of CBSM (5 steps)
o Define the behaviour(s) of concern
• Which behaviours should be promoted? Decision based on:
1. Potential impact of behaviours:
a. Behaviours with significant impact
b. Identify specific behaviours rather than general
2. Resources are available to influence behaviours:
a. Most benefit from focusing on one-time behaviours rather than repetitive
behaviours
o Identify the barriers and benefits to an activity
• Behaviour is likely to have multiple barriers & benefits - when barriers are high, best strategy
is to remove them
• Barriers: reducing the likelihood of behaviour occurring (anything that discourages the
action)
• Benefits: beliefs about positive outcomes from behaviour (reasons for engaging in a
behaviour)
• Research the community you're interested in through:
1. Literature review: industry and academic literature to clarify existing knowledge
2. Qualitative research:
a. Clarify perceived barriers and benefits associated with an action - interviews,
focus groups
3. Quantitative research:
a. Identify relative importance of barriers & benefits - surveys, questionnaires,
representative sample of population
o Develop a strategy utilising tools known to be effective in changing behaviour
• Select behaviour change that address the barriers and benefits identified in Step 2
1. Need to: reduce inconvenience, remove barriers and increase low motivation
2. Methods: social norms, prompts, social diffusion, goal setting, incentives
a. Each address barriers differently and achieve different things
b. Each tool has a base of how to design them effectively
• Which behaviour change tools to use:
Document Summary
Decision based on: potential impact of behaviours, behaviours with significant impact. Identify specific behaviours rather than general: resources are available to influence behaviours, most benefit from focusing on one-time behaviours rather than repetitive. Identify relative importance of barriers & benefits - surveys, questionnaires, representative sample of population: develop a strategy utilising tools known to be effective in changing behaviour. Belief that behaviour is not the right thing: social norms. Try on small scale, think about improvements: evaluate once implemented within a community, broad scale implementation. Social norms: norms - used in diff ways, personal, descriptive (describe what most people do), injunctive (describe what people should do) Social norms: standards shared by a group of people: patterns of thought or behaviour, shared among groups of people, tend to influence, regulate or anchor the behaviour or thoughts of individuals within a group. Social diffusion: adoption quicker if information is socially diffused rather than impersonal (between neighbours and friends, than external force)
