There are various solutions to address the gap between environmental attitudes and behaviors, three of which will be discussed in detail – information, incentives, and competition for status.
Principles
Source: jmorganmarketing.com
What underlies effective solutions in general are several principles:
1. Combine different interventions. Usually, multiple barriers, which influence each other, and change over space, time, and parties, prevent execution of pro-environmental actions.
2. Be in the shoes of the target audience. Understand how the people whose behavior are to be changed perceive the situation. Experts versus the public tend to construe the same situation differently, which, if not understood, may lead to mis-communication and ineffectiveness of subsequent policies/initiatives implemented, even possibly resulting in perceived dishonesty and distrust by the public.
There are two kinds of strategies one can adopt. The social-scientific strategy involves conducting surveys and experiments, and testing plausible interventions via pilot studies. Advantages of this strategy include precision and accuracy. However, with a limited budget, or if the surveys and/or experiments have to be repeated, the costs can amount to a substantial sum.
Another strategy involves including people from the target audience to partake in decision-making, planning, and implementation. This offers several advantages: taking into account target audience’s perspectives, enhancing satisfaction and participation levels, as well as signaling trustworthiness and credibility.
3. Address psychological barriers. As mentioned earlier, humans have perceptual and cognitive limitations. For instance, the concept of bounded rationality dictates that humans have limited mental resources to attend to and process information, which results in reliance on mental shortcuts and other heuristics to process and to make decisions. Having understood bounded rationality, the application for designing interventions then is to attract target audience’s attention effectively, to make information simple and direct, and to sieve out irrelevant/peripheral concerns, focusing only on the most important ones that influence target audience’s behavior.
4. Address environmental barriers. Environmental factors, such as family, peers, governments, as well as other social institutions and organizations can constitute major barriers to individuals’ pro-environmental choices. For instance, people may desire to drive hybrid cars, but they are unable to do so because hybrid cars are not produced in their region, owing to manufacturers’ perceptions that hybrid cars are less efficient, more costly to produce, and may not sell, incurring costs to themselves. In this case, targeting manufacturers’ perceptions through incentives for example, may induce manufacturers to produce hybrid cars for sale, which consumers can then purchase.
5. Be realistic. Pinpointing the exact barriers to pro-environmental action, as well as devising strategies to overcome these barriers, can take quite some time and effort. Moreover, technical issues or other problems can crop up unexpectedly, anytime and anywhere. These difficulties may require meticulous, albeit tedious, trial-and-error methods, to be identified and targeted. Therefore, results may not be as optimistic initially.
6. Be flexible. Monitor program outcomes and adjust its features accordingly. This can be done via surveys, experiments, as well as feedback from target audience, as mentioned earlier.
7. Don’t go overboard. Target audience may perceive interventions as too costly, unfair, or forceful, so, try to stay within the limits of what they can tolerate. At best, stretch the limits through small and gradual steps, to allow them to adjust gradually to the change. Examples of possible steps include informing target audiences on the advantages and importance of adhering to new interventions.
8. Include target audiences. As mentioned earlier, inclusion of target audiences in planning and decision-making entails greater satisfaction, commitment, as well as perceived credibility.