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Rethinking behaviour change at Communicate 2020

Rowena Fletcher-Wood
Freelance Science Communicator
rowena.fletcherwood@gmail.com
ECG Bulletin January 2021
Rethinking behaviour change was just one session that ran during the two-day Communicate 2020 desktop conference on 26th and 27th November organised by the Natural History Consortium. The session concentrated on the psychology of climate action, and emphasised the value of integrating professional identity with climate advocacy to drive “agency”.
 
The session featured speaker Dr Kris De Meyer, King’s College London, and was chaired by Ruth Larbey, University of the West of England.  Dr De Meyer began by discussing the value-action gap between environmental attitudes and actions. His survey findings showed that “powerless” was the word people most often associated with their feelings towards climate and environmental change; when asked what they were doing to mitigate their concerns, 98% provided consumer-based answers, largely connected with recycling and minimising nonessential plastic packaging. This surprisingly high result is demonstrable of the impact of consumerism on our everyday lives, driving us to think only in anti-consumerism terms when we evaluate our potential for climate action. Unsurprisingly, the two are linked: domestic plastic waste management has only a very limited environmental impact, leading to feelings of impotence. Further, the survey demonstrated that the public conflate broader environmental issues and climate change. As professionals in environmental science, this highlights an area for improved communication.
To do this, we need to reframe climate advocacy. More research or statistics will not help – the audience are convinced. Nor will more militancy be more persuasive: although counterintuitive, language of crisis actually distances most people and enhances feelings of powerlessness. However, so long as climate advocacy remains extrinsic to identity, the barriers to change seem unsurmountable. So how do we inspire intrinsic motivation?
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Dr De Meyer brought the focus onto community and, especially, professional identities. Many lack confidence in these identities because it is not immediately obvious how their identity as a parent, sportsperson, or businessperson links to “climate agency”. However, these are roles in which we have more influence and can stimulate greater actions than avoiding plastic straws. As a result of work at King’s College London, new conversations are now being developed to help guide people into recognising the useful actions they could take professionally to advocate for the environment.
 
Borrowing from social psychology, Dr De Meyer advocated for incremental steps and ‘self persuasion’. For example, whilst a person who has always owned a car cannot see how they could do without, a person who has never owned one cannot see why they would. By taking a first “climate action” such as walking to work, we gradually convince ourselves we could do a little more and invest further. After a period of time and effort, this investment comes intrinsic to identity. When asked, most audience members identified their first climate action as becoming a vegetarian. This is an excellent example of intrinsic motivation because vegetarianism is identity-based.
 
These findings link well to those by ClairCity who examined public motivations to improve air quality, and which is reviewed by Jeremy Thomas on page 15.
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  • Home
  • About
    • Committee
    • Annual reports
  • Environmental Briefs
  • Distinguished Guest Lectures
    • 2022 Disposable Attitude: Electronics in the Environment >
      • Steve Cottle
      • Ian Williams
      • Fiona Dear
    • 2019 Radioactive Waste Disposal >
      • Juliet Long
    • 2018 Biopollution: Antimicrobial resistance in the environment >
      • Andrew Singer
      • Celia Manaia
    • 2017 Inside the Engine >
      • Frank Kelly
      • Claire Holman
      • Jacqui Hamilton
      • Simon Birkett
    • 2016 Geoengineering >
      • Alan Robock
      • Joanna Haigh
      • David Santillo
      • Mike Stephenson
    • 2015 Nanomaterials >
      • Eugenia Valsami-Jones
      • Debora F Rodrigues
      • David Spurgeon
    • 2014 Plastic debris in the ocean >
      • Richard Thompson
      • Norman Billingham
    • 2013 Rare earths and other scarce metals >
      • Thomas Graedel
      • David Merriman
      • Michael Pitts
      • Andrea Sella
      • Adrian Chapman
    • 2012 Energy, waste and resources >
      • RAFFAELLA VILLA
      • PAUL WILLIAMS
      • Kris Wadrop
    • 2011 The Nitrogen Cycle – in a fix?
    • 2010 Technology and the use of coal
    • 2009 The future of water >
      • J.A. (Tony) Allen
      • John W. Sawkins
    • 2008 The Science of Carbon Trading >
      • Jon Lovett
      • Matthew Owen
      • Terry barker
      • Nigel Mortimer
    • 2007 Environmental chemistry in the Polar Regions >
      • Eric Wolff
      • Tim JICKELLS
      • Anna Jones
    • 2006 The impact of climate change on air quality >
      • Michael Pilling
      • GUANG ZENG
    • 2005 DGL Metals in the environment: estimation, health impacts and toxicology
    • 2004 Environmental Chemistry from Space
  • Articles, reviews & updates
    • Articles
    • Reviews
    • Updates
  • Meetings
    • Upcoming meetings
    • Meeting reports
  • Resources
  • Professional Qualifications
  • Index