Changing Behaviour: Successful Environmental Programmes in the Workplace

Abstract

There is an increasing focus on improving the pro-environmental attitudes, behaviour and habits of individuals, whether at home, in education, travelling, shopping or in the workplace. This article focuses on the workplace by conducting a multi-disciplinary literature review of research that has examined the influence of organization-based behaviour change initiatives. The review includes only research evidence that measured actual environmental performance (e.g. energy use) rather than solely using self-reported methods (e.g. questionnaires). The authors develop an 'employee pro-environmental behaviour' (e-PEB) framework, which contains individual, group, organizational and contextual factors that have predictive relevance across different behaviours and organizations. The review shows that the strongest predictors are environmental awareness, performance feedback, financial incentives, environmental infrastructure, management support and training. A key finding from this review is that attitude change is not necessarily a pre-requisite for behaviour change in the workplace.

Environmental responsibility in hospital care: Findings from a qualitative study

“…[45] This is encouraging, as in our data and earlier study, [10] staff's attitudes were considered to be a substantial barrier to progress in environmental responsibility. On the other hand, another study [47] found that a pro-environmental attitude was not necessarily required, as favorable work structures, systems, cultures and rewards, and staff's awareness of practical sustainable actions, may already be enough to change their behavior. This supports our findings about the need for diverse organizational support in environmental work.…”

“…In addition to receiving education, people also need to be motivated to behave in an environmentally friendly way [14] by other approaches. [16] Administrators could, for example, give work communities feedback on their performance [29] and reward their success financially [43,47] and publicly. Also, a sense of community motivates people to act pro-environmentally, [48] particularly if it benefits their private life.…”

Synthesizing building physics with social psychology: An interdisciplinary framework for context and occupant behavior in office buildings

“…Researchers now broadly recognize the contextual (rather than purely environmental) factors influencing the human-building interaction [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Explorations regarding the achievement of energy-efficient usage in the building sector are today established around the understanding of the socio-technical link between building occupants' behavior and the use of building technologies, energy services, and controls [9].…”

“…These variables typically include indoor and outdoor environmental (e.g., indoor/outdoor air temperature, illuminance level, CO2 concentration), contextual (e.g., time of the day, day of the week), and personal traits (gender, age, and user profiles). Recently, models accounting for influential contextual factors such as ease of control, freedom of movement, knowledge of technology, and usability factors are discussed within the building engineering community [10,11,15,16,23] …”

“…This mechanism induces to a reduced number of choices taken; accordingly, people tend to be more dissatisfied with the choices they have made, provoking a vicious circle of demotivating effect. Prohibiting actions or persuading people too much can be perceived as constraints, resulting in a desire for what has been banned or restricted, or even a repulsion towards to the persuading message [15]. As a generalization, to the extent users perceive positive realization of exercised control to ensure comfort conditions, their satisfaction with the indoor environment is guaranteed [13].…”