Promote sustainable behaviour

To promote sustainable behaviour, we must look into both the internal and external factors.factors affecting behaviorThe external factors include:

  1. Affordances
  2. Social norms – To gain acceptance. This allows people to compare to each other so that one will will know where he/she stands compared to others.
  3. Reinforcement contingencies – Rewards and punishments for behavior
  4. Prompts – Reminder to behave in a certain way
  5. Goals – Provides a clear direction of what to achieve
  6. Feedback – Allows one to see if goal is achieved

The internal factors include:

  1. Knowledge – Important aspect to change behaviour to become more sustainable. Core of behavioural change but it cannot work alone
  2. Attitudes – Allow prediction of behaviour. Theory of planned behaviour. People with positive attitudes to sustainable behaviour only need to be reminded whereas those with negative attitudes need to be persuaded
  3. Values – Value-belief-norm-model.
  4. Emotions
  5. Efficacy – Perceived ability to complete an action. Theory of planned behaviour (perceived control). A stronger factor than knowledge or attitude in predicting behaviour
  6. Responsibility – People need to feel responsible before acting. Problem of bystander effect. Anonymity reduces attribution of responsibility

By targeting at those areas mentioned above, we can promote sustainable behaviour towards the rainforests and sun bear conservation. For example, we can use mass media to change attitudes as mass media is a powerful persuader and it is more vivd, memorable, and easily accessible.

Models for changing behaviour includes the applied behavioural analysis (ABA) which includes 3 basic principles: (1) Focus on observable behaviour (2) Looks at external factors (3) Uses reinforcement based strategies. The process has been described with the acronym DO IT (Define, target behaviour Observe occurrence of behaviour, Intervene to modify behaviour, Test effectiveness of intervention)