These past two weeks spent traveling in France and Italy convinced me even more about the role of culture and society in shaping individual behaviors. Most interesting was to observe how both I and Prad adapted our behaviors to fit the different customs in each country. Prad, who usually protests vigorously the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke back home, thought nothing of taking strolls on the smoke-filled Parisian sidewalks. In Italy, we quickly learned to conform to the practice of drinking bottled water at the restaurants. Two examples of the power of social norms, relative to individual environmental choices.
This raises the question of how to bring changes in normative behaviors, that will support sustainable lifestyles, across cultures. According to Horne, “New norms are thought to emerge when costs of compliance with existing norms become too high relative to the rewards“. Montgomery weighs concerns of costly normative actions against concerns of morality or social opinion. Though unlikely to change their behavior when norms become costly, individuals will praise those willing to do so; after a few have tested the waters, a domino effect of individuals who harbor less fear of social sanction will follow. If these innovators receive social approval, individuals will continue to participate in new strategies in order to gain recognition. Christakis‘s research similarly points to the social nature of behavioral changes.
On the green front, several trends are emerging that should give us hope. First, is the growing acceptance of the idea of green as universally cool and no longer the claim of a few treehuggers. The social sanction for behaviors such as biking, recycling, carpooling, using mass transit, recycling, to name just a few, has tipped towards the positive. Concurrently, rising gas and energy prices, are making it harder and harder for people to maintain their old behaviors. SUVs, boats, superfluous driving no longer make sense for the majority of Americans. Other adaptive behaviors are stirring, as in urban gardening, and driving more slowly.
Because time is of the essence, we would do well to consider strategies to accelerate this movement:
First, are opinion changing strategies, including all mass media and communication campaigns. Every green drop counts. What I write here in this blog. What you write, either in your own blog, or as a commenter on others’ blogs. What you say in casual conversations to your friends and coworkers. What you ask from your elected representative. What you communicate through your example, as in here and here. What the “we” and the “Together” people do. What Barack Obama, and other leaders declare is important. What the New York Times, and the rest of the press put on their front page. What Arianna Huffington chooses to promote. It all matters.
Second, are cost raising strategies, in relative terms, either through the offering of new, lower cost options, or the raising of the costs of existing options, whether volitional or not. Rising gas and energy prices are an example of the latter. And so are various forms of carbon tax. Smart technologies such as more fuel efficient cars or home energy efficiency solutions work on the other end, through the promise of higher financial rewards, and social acceptance.
Third are direct behavior shaping strategies such as evolved from Pierre Chandon‘s research. Chandon‘s study, ‘When Does the Past Repeat Itself? The Role of Self-Prediction and Norms.‘ tells us that ‘by predicting our behavior, we can actually reinforce good habits and break bad ones‘, a sophisticated twist on the power of self-fulfilling prophecy. What this means for our problem, is that by asking people such simple questions as ‘Do you bike, do you carpool, how often and how long do you walk, do you turn off your lights, do you hang your clothes to dry, do you eat fresh food?’ chances are it will increase the likelihood of them engaging in these behaviors. Conversely, by not mentioning other negative behaviors such as driving, using dryer, eating processed food, etc, they will be less inclined to perpetuate those.
This is just the beginning of a long list. My main point is, thought leaders on climate change and other global environmental issues with a human factor component, need to spend more time exploring such behavior shaping strategies, based on the available body of research on normative behaviors.
Wow ! This is really interesting Marguerite. You are back, and you come with truly fantastic stuff.
Hope you both enjoyed good ol’ Europe ! Take care.
Nice post. I’ve been thinking along these lines, too. Since I moved to Chicago, some people have been telling me that people don’t care about recycling here, and the system the have here leaves a lot to be desired, to be sure. For instance, the building I work in provided recycling bins, but my co-workers looked into it and discovered that they were actually emptying the bins into the trash at night. All of us in my office were taking our newspapers and pop cans home at the end of the day.
A couple of months ago, however, the building management got their act together, and they’re recycling in earnest.
But did you also notice above that I said that all of us in my office were taking home our own recycling? This wasn’t an organized effort, it was something that all of my co-workers were just doing to take some personal responsibility, and it was just kind of assumed by all of us that we would do it. There was no debate. At the water cooler or over lunch, we all share our experiences about going to the grocery store with our reusable bags, and how we’re all making changes in our day-to-day lives to drive less (or not at all) and adopt more environmentally sustainable living habits.
I think it’s important to start with oneself and model environmentally friendly habits for the people that we encounter every day. I agree with you, however, that we need leadership for this kind of change, too. I believe in the top-down and bottom-up approach in tandem.
But more importantly, for myself, I need to see the glimmers of hope like this. While some of my friends are telling me that Chicagoans don’t care about sustainable living habits, that’s just not what I’m seeing as I walk through the world here.
Marguerite for president!
“the glimmers of hope” – love it.
Look at what automatically came up as related post (through wordpress.com):
There are many other interesting posts on that blog.
Thanks Meryn. Went to customerinnovations blog and left comment there.
Regarding opinion change, I recently read about Tom Crompton from WWF UK on Worldchanging:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008144.html
He recently had an opinion piece at the BBC site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7359018.stm
He blogs here:
http://www.valuingnature.org/
Marguerite, great post. Actually, GREAT POST! Your intuitive sense and observation skills, in combination with the culture-shifting in your travels, all made for a very fruitful combination.
I agree that this is a very important topic. Great food for thought.
Welcome back.
My Dear Ms. Marguerite,
Happy Bastille Day and long live liberty, equality and fraternity!
(It’s still 7.14 as I’m posting this.)
I appreciate your comments about the content of the conversations we’re already having with people we meet/know and how that content (especially when it’s meaningful) enables us to direct our shared consciousness and individual behavioral choices in more sustainable directions.
I also appreciate (a lot) you saying: “time is of the essence”!
The kinds of clear signals our species-wide global-brain needs now, are born from individuals recognizing we’ve already entered crises-mode and aren’t freaked out by that recognition. Such signals differ in nature from those conveyed via popular campaigns. “Crisis” as a topic just ain’t popular! And it’s quite challenging to deliver clear information about how best to respond to our emergent energy/cimate/food/finance crises to anyone who hasn’t yet recognized them as such.
Clear, courageous and calm individuals can best meet our current demand for enabling other individuals to recognize that we’re already in crises-mode and that we need to collaborate on managing the messes we’ve been making as well as preventing such mess-making in the first place.
The global challenges we humans have produced for ourselves demand our best behavior and our best intelligence in various, unprecedented ways. Individuals wanting to become more conscious, choosing to evolve, designing/using new social technologies and helping one another prepare for managing the mother of all crises that seems to be on our horizon; such individuals, I believe, are growing in both number and stature.
The emergent properties liberated when such individuals team-up with one another are worth imagining and cultivating. Let’s help set the initial conditions for competent, nay excellent leadership properties to emerge from teams/networks of such individuals. The quality of relationships between and among individuals (rather than individuals themselves/ourselves) can become our focus in seeking the kind leadership that’s appropriate for managing the extraordinarily complex challenges/crises we now face.
Love works and our current predicament is so serious that we may need to have fun if we’re going to deal with it successfully.
Ciao for now,
paul
Meryn,
I totally support Tom Crompton’s piece. And I agree that the small steps/individual change approach is turning out to be ill suited for the kind of systemic problem at stake here. One only need to look at the evidence. Freeways are still as crowded as before, and on the whole people haven’t changed much in their carbon hungry lifestyles.
A global problem as climate change requires global measures, as in political and mass persuasion efforts to plant the seeds. Rather than trying to change people’s behaviors, I am also coming to the conclusion that more important, is to change people’s attitudes that will make them more amenable to supporting the right kinds of political changes.
Thanks for the great links!