An official website of the United States government
Abstract As biodiversity loss and climate change accelerate, more people worldwide are engaging in conservation behaviors to “do their part.” Yet, individual behavior change alone is insufficient for the large‐scale, rapid change needed to address these crises. Relational organizing, which involves individuals reaching out to others in their social network, can enhance the speed and scale of conservation behavior change and address the complex, collective action nature of many conservation problems. However, many people practicing conservation behaviors in their own lives do not engage in relational organizing about conservation issues. Here, we suggest this may be the result of specific social‐psychological factors inhibiting people from reaching out to others. We summarize the evidence and offer a research and practice agenda to prioritize (1) understanding the social‐psychological barriers that prevent relational organizing, and (2) addressing these barriers through targeted outreach interventions to help scale and accelerate community action for conservation.
more »
« less
Encouraging social diffusion of pro‐environmental behavior through online workshop‐based interventions
Abstract Motivating people to take environmentally friendly action, especially collective actions that promote greater social engagement, is important for addressing environmental issues like biodiversity loss. We conducted an online workshop‐based field experiment to target social‐psychological perceptions to motivate people to plant native plants and encourage others to do the same. To shift these perceptions, we added 13 microinterventions to half the workshops, including normative messaging, public commitment‐making, and providing feedback on the impact of reaching out to others. We used a voucher system to track real‐world behavior by partnering with native plant nurseries. Compared to an information‐only control workshop, our intervention workshops initially increased certain social‐psychological perceptions related to encouraging others to plant native plants. However, they did not change behaviors, or many perceptions, compared to control workshops. Additional exploratory analyses revealed differing patterns of behavioral perceptions 2 months after the workshops. Further research is needed that implements experimental methods and real‐world measures of conservation behavior to evaluate the impacts of theory‐based outreach tactics on collective actions.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10468618
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Conservation Science and Practice
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2578-4854
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Audience segmentation can be used to identify target audiences in environmental public engagement and communication, but few studies have used segmentation to study biodiversity conservation behavior. This study used segmentation to better understand perceptions and behaviors around different types of actions related to native plant gardening. With a United States representative survey (n = 1,200), we measured beliefs and intentions to engage in personal-sphere (i.e., individual), social diffusion (i.e., encouraging others to act), and civic action behavior (e.g., voting). A latent class analysis (LCA) revealed four distinct groups within the population: Disengaged, Potential Adopters, Potential Amplifiers, and Potential Advocates. Each class comprised approximately one-quarter of the United States population. We found that certain groups are more receptive to personal-sphere behavior, while others may be more receptive to social diffusion behavior or civic action behavior. The groups varied by key distinguishing characteristics: perceptions around civic action, previous personal-sphere and social diffusion behavior, and intentions to engage in personal-sphere action. Findings revealed opportunities to create tailored public engagement strategies to engage different groups in urban biodiversity conservation behavior.more » « less
-
Communities in the United States are increasingly relying on place-based climate adaptation workshops to aid attempts to prepare for—and cope with—climate change, but there is limited empirical evidence about what participants believe these workshops can achieve and what elements they find most valuable. To begin addressing this gap, we sought to understand participant perceptions of effective workshop elements and outcomes across a wide range of locations and workshop formats. We surveyed participants in 33 place-based adaptation workshops that took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020. We sought to understand participants’ perceptions of the outcomes of these workshops and the workshop elements that drove those outcomes. Results suggest that workshop participants commonly believed that they learned, strengthened their sense of efficacy, and deepened relationships with other workshop attendees. Participants identified specific climate actions resulting from the workshop, including knowledge dissemination efforts and project implementation. We argue that effective adaptation workshops can also expand reference groups and foster norms around climate change adaptation.more » « less
-
The ability to predict and understand other people’s actions is critical for real-world social behavior. Here we hypothesized that representations of social roles (e.g., cashier, mechanic, doctor) enable people to build rapid expectations about what others know and how they might act. Using a self-paced read- ing paradigm, we show that role representations support real time expectations about how other people might act (Study 1) and the knowledge they might possess (Study 2). Moreover, people reported more surprisal when the events deviated from role expectations, and they were more likely to misremember what happened. Our results suggest that roles are a powerful route for social understanding that has been previously under- studied in social cognition.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)The current research examines differences in what motivates environmentally sustainable behavior between more and less religious people in the United States. We found that religiosity moderates the extent to which environmental beliefs predict pro-environmental support. Specifically, environmental beliefs predicted pro-environmental support less strongly among more religious people than less religious people (Studies 1 and 2). Using a correlational (Study 2) and an experimental (Study 3) design, we further found that one particular aspect of religiosity—believing in a controlling god—reduced the importance of personally held environmental beliefs in shaping one’s support for pro-environmental actions. Our findings suggest that motivation to act based on personal beliefs may be attenuated among people who are religious because they believe in an external source of control. Sociocultural factors, such as religion, shape the psychological underpinnings of social actions, and the present research underscores the importance of understanding psychological diversity in promoting support toward environmental sustainability.more » « less
