Motivating Society-wide Pro-environmental Change

Abstract

We are facing environmental crises, but pro-environmental action is seriously lagging behind. Contrary to popular beliefs, we argue that this is not caused by people undervaluing the environment but rather by people structurally underestimating how much others care. Only through showing that many do value the environment will we inspire society-wide pro-environmental action.

Insights from early COVID-19 responses about promoting sustainable action

“…This in turn affects how much responsibility individuals ascribe to themselves for contributing to the crisis, and perceive themselves as being able to contribute to the mitigation of the crisis. This, together with individuals' perception of what other people do, appreciate and value (for example, perceived group values and social norms), influence personal norms 18 . We elaborate on these factors below.…”

“…People with stronger altruistic values (that is, caring for others and social justice) and biospheric values (that is, caring for nature and the environment) are likely to have stronger personal norms to take action to mitigate global crises 8,20 . Studies across a variety of nations demonstrate that many individuals strongly endorse altruistic and biospheric values, suggesting there is a relatively strong value base for actions to mitigate global crises 18 . Altruistic and biospheric values mostly affect personal norms indirectly, through factors described below.…”

“…Indeed, observing and learning from others strongly influences human action 14,27,28 . Key social factors include perceptions of others' values (that is, perceived group values) 18,25,29 , of what others would approve (that is, injunctive norms) and of what others actually do (that is, descriptive norms) 14,30 . Such social factors reflect what relevant others think is important, right and sensible, that could be internalized into personal norms 31 .…”

“…In addition, mitigative actions were facilitated (for example, free tests), and those who were negatively impacted by mitigative actions were supported (for example, facilitating working from home and compensating those with financial losses). For many global environmental crises, such strong, coherent and consistent regulations and norms are missing, and people seem to underestimate how much others care about such crises and their mitigation 18,25 . Moreover, it is typically difficult to observe and know to what extent others engage in different sustainable behaviours as actions are often private, hidden in a larger bundle of practices and no individual is consistently pro-environmental in every action 23 .…”

Overestimating One's “Green” Behavior: Better‐Than‐Average Bias May Function to Reduce Perceived Personal Threat from Climate Change

“…Such distortions operate in the perception of community opinion about climate change, whereby people tend to overestimate levels of skepticism in the broader community (Leviston, Walker, & Morwinski, 2013). Similar research suggests that people underestimate how much others care about the environment, and overestimate the stigma associated with acting environmentally (Bouman & Steg, 2019;Klas, Zinkiewicz, Zhou, & Clarke, 2018). In the current research, we investigate whether misperceptions about what others think in relation to climate change extend to misperceptions about what others are doing to combat climate change, relative to one's own actions.…”