Delivering practical responses Lifestyle and behaviour
Changing behaviour in a changing climate
A major challenge in the process of mitigation and adaptation to climate change is influencing the way people behave. It may not be enough to develop solutions which reduce greenhouse gas emissions if people do not use them.
The main factors that affect a person’s behaviour are their:
- Beliefs about a behaviour (e.g. cycling to work will generate fewer carbon emissions than driving and this is a good thing). This is also related to self identity (e.g. I care about the environment so I will cycle as opposed to taking the car).
- How an action is viewed by a person’s friends and family (e.g. my friends will think I am high-achieving if I arrive at work in my convertible).
- The degree of control a person feels they have over a behaviour, which is strongly related to the perceived difficulty of performing a behaviour (eg I am not able to take the bus to work because I need to drop the children at school on the way).
When seeking to deliver mitigation and adaptation responses, practitioners should consider:
- Working to understand the barriers and benefits associated with interventions which mitigate climate change.
- Active community engagement.
- Future users of buildings and developments.
- The ability of an intervention to influence people positively.
- The perceived difficulty of performing an action.
- Whether there might be side effects or other impacts that may undermine whether a behaviour will reduce carbon emissions. For example, the ‘rebound effect’ is a recent theory which suggests that reducing emissions resulting from one activity may increase emissions related to another activity (eg a person uses money saved on electricity bills through energy efficiency measures to buy a low-cost flight).
Who can help?
- Environmental psychologists – sources of information on influencing human behaviour and the interactions between the environment and behaviour.
- School travel planners/transport planners – often experienced in developing interventions which promote sustainable transport through investigating consumers' existing behaviours and beliefs.
- Policy planners – increasingly involved in implementing and monitoring policies and interventions associated with sustainable development.