Even though many people have pro-environmental convictions, oftentimes they do not actually engage in pro-environmental behaviour. We hypothesise that behavioural change is hampered by a social feedback loop that reinforces the status quo: People routinely underestimate others' pro-environmental convictions, and when they expect that others care less, they are unlikely to show more pro-environmental behaviour themselves, which reinforces the general impression that people do not care. This leads to the question of how to effectively elicit a push from the current state to a state in which pro-environmental behaviour becomes more widespread. We examine this question with an agent-based model (ABM) which was parameterised using individual-level survey data collected in several Dutch neighbourhoods. We explore whether interventions that make people talk more about their convictions versus interventions that enhance the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour can trigger individuals to update their expectations and consequently tip the system into a more environmentally-friendly state. Our simulations suggest that enhancing the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour with an intervention may be most effective to motivate durable pro-environmental change. Motivating more talk on the topic only generates temporary effects in our simulations. These results can provide valuable guidance for empirical research on norm-based interventions and it may eventually inform the development of evidence-based policies that effectively encourage pro-environmental change.

Overcoming inaction: An agent-based modelling study of social interventions that promote systematic pro-environmental change / Hoffmann, Tabea; Ye, Mengbin; Zino, Lorenzo; Cao, Ming; Rauws, Ward; Bolderdijk, Jan Willem. - In: JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. - ISSN 0272-4944. - STAMPA. - 94:(2024). [10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102221]

Overcoming inaction: An agent-based modelling study of social interventions that promote systematic pro-environmental change

Zino, Lorenzo;
2024

Abstract

Even though many people have pro-environmental convictions, oftentimes they do not actually engage in pro-environmental behaviour. We hypothesise that behavioural change is hampered by a social feedback loop that reinforces the status quo: People routinely underestimate others' pro-environmental convictions, and when they expect that others care less, they are unlikely to show more pro-environmental behaviour themselves, which reinforces the general impression that people do not care. This leads to the question of how to effectively elicit a push from the current state to a state in which pro-environmental behaviour becomes more widespread. We examine this question with an agent-based model (ABM) which was parameterised using individual-level survey data collected in several Dutch neighbourhoods. We explore whether interventions that make people talk more about their convictions versus interventions that enhance the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour can trigger individuals to update their expectations and consequently tip the system into a more environmentally-friendly state. Our simulations suggest that enhancing the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour with an intervention may be most effective to motivate durable pro-environmental change. Motivating more talk on the topic only generates temporary effects in our simulations. These results can provide valuable guidance for empirical research on norm-based interventions and it may eventually inform the development of evidence-based policies that effectively encourage pro-environmental change.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11583/2984885