This blog might actually raise more questions than it answers. There are also a lot of questions asked in this blog. Why are there strict rules for the use of water, but aren’t there a lot of rules for the use of air-conditioning? Why does everything come with one or several plastic bags despite of the Singapore packaging agreement? There are a few things that we should keep in consideration when we look at promoting and changing sustainable behavior.

It may be clear that the Singaporean government is trying hard to make Singapore as green as possible. There are a lot of new rules, laws and plans created in the past years to increase a sustainable way of living for the Singaporean residents. The government is ready, they want a high recycle percentage, less pollution, no littering, more people who save energy and go on. However, it is really hard to change the behavior of a population. It involves changing and improving the knowledge, norms, attitudes and finally the behavior of the people in the country. This takes a lot of time. This could be the reason why the plans of the government are not always in full practice yet. Changes in laws and behavior of the people will appear gradually. for example, there is a Singapore packaging agreement at the moment, but it may take a few more extra years before the use of plastic bags and styrofoam cups has been decreased. However, there is already an increase in blogs, articles and community programs against the use of, for example, styrofoam products. This makes clear that there is already something changing in the awareness and behavior of some people. Let’s keep up the good work!

Another important factor is how hard it is for the government to control the behavior. For example, it will be a hard challenge for the government to decrease the use of air-conditioning inside homes. How can they control that behavior? Of course, they can try to change the knowledge, norms, attitudes and than the behavior However, they might be able to speed the change in behavior up a little bit by making regulations. This way, you force people to show the desired behavior by external incentives. Fines are an example of this. A government hopes that people will get used to a certain way of (forced) lifestyle, and that they will finally internalize the desired behavior. This is actually not always as easy as it sounds. Punishing people for using the air-conditioning too much is almost impossible! How does one control that? We have to keep this factor in consideration when looking at conservation issues as well. Some things may be easier to change and control than others.

It is also good to keep in mind that the government (or experts) sometimes have other needs and wishes than the people whose behavior they want to change. The government or expert look at possible consequences on the long term, while the population often thinks more about what they have to sacrifice on the short term. The people in the population can’t be expected to have the same knowlegde as the experts or the government as well, so that they do not really know what the benefits are if they change their behavior. You will have to make people aware of the problem, which brings us back to my first point: the change of the level of knowlegde, norms, attitudes and behavior which means a long process of internalisation. If you really want to change people’s behavior, you are not going to achieve that with external incentives such as regulations and punishments alone, but when the punishment is absent, the change of behavior will be absent as well. That is why in the end, I think that the process of internalisation is the best way to change people’s behavior, but that external forces and incentives can help to speed this process up a little.