ABSTRACT: In order to address the environmental problems that we are facing, we need to focus on changing our society’s consumption behaviour. In order to do this, we, as people and/or agencies interested in effecting change, need to understand what drives behaviour and how it can be changed. One of the most effective ways of achieving change would be to bring about a fundamental shift of social norms in order to make a sustainable society "cool". This fundamental shift can be achieved through an integrated program which uses predisposing, enabling and reinforcing strategies.

Acknowledgements and Disclaimer: Though all of this paper was written by the author, it is work developed in conjunction with Dr. C. James Frankish at the Institute for Health Promotion Research, Dr. Robert Vanwynsburghe at the Sustainable Development Research Institute, and Aviva Savelson, at the Institute of Resources and the Environment, all at the University of British Columbia. Parts of it will appear in a co-written paper to be published soon. This paper is also a very rough draft of work that will be included in my Master’s thesis. As such, I ask that it not be cited.

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The Problem

The idea that we in North America have too much was brought home to me when I returned to the United States from Central America, after four months of backpacking and living frugally. On the plane there was a catalogue designed for the executive traveller, full of products for mail order. The one that caught my attention was a hot dog toaster – with separate slots for the buns and the dogs. I realized then that consumerism had gone too far into the realm of the ridiculous. I had not yet realized how destructive our ridiculous consumption was.

The more I read, the more I understood that the standard of life in developed countries is not environmentally sustainable. We consume too much of everything and destroy far too many ecosystems around the world so that we may continue to consume excessively. And it is consumption, defined broadly as the consuming of any resource, which causes all the environmental problems that we face today. Consumption of land leads to suburban sprawl, which leads to increased car use, which leads to consumption of resources to build the cars. The existence of so many cars breeds roads which consume resources and land, disturb ecosystems and lead to increased chemical run-off, not to mention the air pollution from the cars. Consumption of housing on that land, with lawns and septic tanks and a host of other conveniences consumes many more resources. Consumption of water to feed the lawn, the toilet, the shower, the dishwasher and the washing machine leads to groundwater pollution and the depletion of freshwater reservoirs. The list goes on and on, even without hot-dog toasters.

As Bill Rees points out, it would take four Earths to support everyone at our current level of consumption. When 20 or more Bangladeshis are living on the amount that I consume, there is a problem, and it is not the problem of the Bangladeshis. I, and all of my First World compatriots, need to consume less. Of course, that it is easy to say, and much more difficult for us to do. We need to change our whole way of thinking about consumption and realize that we need to live more simply. Of course, some consumption is necessary to sustain life and at this point in the development of society, going back to the hunter-gatherer stage would be rather a hard sell. We expect to be comfortable. The trick is in drawing the line between justifiable comfort and over-consumption and squandering of resources.

In recent years, the problem of over-consumption has started to enter our collective psyche. At the same time, many organizations have implemented programs aimed at changing particular consumption behaviours. As a result, there have been many small changes in our consuming-all behaviour, such as recycling. However, addressing each behaviour individually is time-consuming and Sisyphean and may do more harm than good if, for example, people feel that it is acceptable to consume more so long as they recycle the packaging. These measures do not induce a reduction in overall consumption in the majority of people and for the most part, our North American society continues lurching along, feeling somewhat guilty as we consume, but not changing in a fundamental way. What is needed is a comprehensive program of behaviour change strategies aimed at changing the factors which underlie our behaviours. But before we can devise that, we should look at a model which has worked in the area of behaviour change.

The Precede-Proceed Model

The Precede-Proceed Model is a model of behaviour change that has been used quite often in Health Promotion work (Green and Krueter, 1999). The model is based on the principle that most enduring health behaviour change is voluntary in nature. In order to successfully encourage behaviour change, a systematic planning process is used that seeks to empower individuals with understanding, motivation and skills and active engagement in community affairs to improve quality of life. Like many planning models, it is an iterative model, although it seems quite linear in the diagram. I have reproduced the model in Figure 1. Some of the wording has been changed to make it more applicable to environmental issues, but there have been no other changes.

There are two stages to the model. The first stage is Precede, which has several component phases. In Phase 1 we assess our quality of life and determine what is wrong – in this case it would be the quality of life for the planet, which is not doing so well. In Phase 2, we determine the problems in human and ecosystem health which affect the quality of life. Then, in Phase 3, we look at what there is in our behaviour and lifestyle and in the greater environment (here meaning structural environment as well as the natural environmental) that cause these problems. Next, in Phase 4 we then look at what factors influence our behaviour and the environment. These can be Predisposing Factors, which affect our knowledge, beliefs attitudes and values; Enabling Factors, which make it possible or impossible for us to do things; or Reinforcing Factors, which provide us with tangible or social incentives or disincentives for doing or not doing certain things. After we have determined which factors are influencing our behaviour and the environment, we move to Phase 5 where we look at how we can help to shift those factors through strategies aimed at the individual or group and at the structural environment.

After we have done our assessment, we move to the second stage of the model, Proceed. The first phase of this stage, Phase 6, is the implementation of the strategies we have devised in Phase 5. However, we are not done once we have put the strategies in place – we move to Phase 7, which is a process evaluation. In this phase we have to monitor the strategies and their effects on the predisposing, reinforcing and enabling factors. In Phase 8, impact evaluation, we monitor the factors and whether they have any impact on behaviour, lifestyles and the environment. Finally, in Phase 9, we look at how the strategies have affected our health, ecosystem health and quality of life in an outcome evaluation. From the assessments we determine how many iterations are necessary – if we find there to be a problem we can go back and adjust either our understanding or our strategies.

Figure 1: The Precede-Proceed Model

This model is very valuable for designing behaviour change strategies for several reasons. First of all, it points out the need to consider both internal and external factors on behaviour and address them both. Second, it advises a comprehensive strategy which addresses predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors. Third, it shows that this comprehensive strategy should be comprised of different tactics, instead of relying on one tactic such as education. And finally, it highlights the need for evaluating the effects of the strategies. That it would be difficult to use this model comprehensively in the area of behaviour change leading to sustainability should not deter us from using it in a general sense. In other words, we should not get caught up in trying to determine exactly what sustainability should look like or how we would assess it, instead we should look at the problems we can determine and the general direction we want to go and work from there.

So, in assuming that it is our consumption behaviour which causes the problems in ecosystem health and the quality of life for the planet we have reached Phase 3 of the model. Phase 3 also points out that we need to look both at our behaviour and lifestyle and in the greater structural environment to determine the problem, and I would argue that our consumption behaviour is a product of both, and that they are very interrelated: our lifestyle is a reflection of the our society and our society reflects our lifestyle. Having determined this, we need to look at the internal and external factors which determine our behaviour.

Internal Determinants of Behaviour

It is almost impossible to predict whether a given person will engage in a sustainable behaviour which they have not done before. In order to do so, they need to form the motivation to do it. There are many factors which work together to create this motivation to act. These are graphically displayed in Figure 2. As you can see in that diagram, the formation of motivation relies on the interaction of many clusters of factors:

• demographics
• personal factors: personality, self-efficacy, locus of control, beliefs, and values
• practical factors: skills and knowledge of strategies
• knowledge
• attitudes: to the behaviour in question and to the target area of the behaviour
• life experience: habits and experience
• relations to others: personal norms and self-concept
• on the spot evaluations: of the need for the behaviour, its consequences and ones
• rsonal responsibility for the behaviour
• the social milieu and social norms the person ascribes to
• location and surroundings

Figure 2: Determinants of Behaviour

These areas overlap and influence each other and the formation of intentions to act. Being environmentally positive in most or all of them is necessary if behaviours are going to change, but not sufficient to bring about change in themselves. However, it is a good idea to look at each area because they do form an important piece of the action puzzle. The sections that follow will examine the above factors and their relationships to one another and their ultimate effect on behaviour.

Demographics

Demographic information refers to the external characteristics of a person, such as age, sex and education level. Demographics is studied because it is assumed that identifying the segments of the population most likely to respond to behaviour change efforts will aid in the adoption of change. However, there have been few clear cut findings from demographic research.

According to some research, the ideal pro-environmental target should be a well-educated, liberal, religious, young, female, black urban dweller (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Woodrum and Hoban, 1994; Dietz, Stern et al., 1998; Fransson and Garling, 1999; Zelezny, 1999). However, the predictive ability of most of these factors has been challenged and the findings that have emerged have been fairly complex.

Age is often thought to be a strong predictor of environmental behaviour, and indeed several researchers have found a strong negative relationship between age and environmental concern, that is, younger people are more pro-environmental (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Dietz, Stern et al., 1998; Fransson and Garling, 1999). However, Dietz et al (1998) also found that the relationship depends on the indicator used to assess environmentalism; with some indicators young people emerged as the least pro-environmental.

Education and political ideology have been found to be predictive of willingness to sacrifice, petition signing, environmental group membership and attitude to government spending, but they have no significant effect on consumer behaviour (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Dietz, Stern et al., 1998; Fransson and Garling, 1999). Dietz (1998) also found that education is negatively related to the environmental belief in the fragility of nature. Increased political liberalism affects all the aforementioned behaviours, including consumer behaviour, but there is limited evidence supporting an association between social class and environmental concern (Fransson and Garling, 1999).

The majority of studies looking at gender and environmentalism in the last decade have found that, compared to men, women reported greater participation in pro-environmental behaviour (Zelezny, 2000). However, reports by both Van Liere and Dunlop (1980) and Dietz et al (1998) indicate that this association is not straightforward. According to Dietz et al (1998), women have stronger pro-environmental consumer behaviour than men, but they are less willing to make sacrifices to protect the environment.

Looking at racial indicators, it has been found that Blacks are more pro-environmental than Whites in behaviour, but only on some indicators. They are reported to be more willing to engage in pro-environmental consumer behaviour as well as environmental spending (Dietz, Stern et al., 1998). Their environmental beliefs are sometimes more pro-environmental than Whites but sometimes less (Dietz, Stern et al., 1998). However, these findings are based on American studies and it is unclear how applicable they would be to the multi-cultural context of Canada, given our two countries’ different histories.

Location has been found to be significant: urban dwellers have been found to be more likely to be environmentally concerned than rural residents (Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980; Fransson and Garling, 1999).

As for the last characteristic of our target, according to Dietz et al (1998) religious denomination is related to willingness to sacrifice, consumer behaviour and willingness to sign a petition. Fundamentalists are sometimes less pro-environmental than other denominations. Dietz et al suggest that there may also be meaningful links between religion and environmentalism that are not tied to denomination or religiosity. Similarly, Woodrum and Hoban (1994) indicate that dominion beliefs do not interfere with environmental concerns. They found that greater religiosity was not associated with any of the behavioural measures used by Dietz et al.

Looking back at our carefully delineated person, we can see that only a few characteristics remain sharp: our target is an politically liberal urban dweller who somewhat more likely to be young and female. It is not surprising that some researchers have gone so far as to say that no demographic variables have predictive power (McKenzie-Mohr, Nemiroff et al., 1995).It would be safe to say that behaviour change strategies should not be specifically targeted based on demographic information.

Personal Factors

There are several personal factors which are thought to have an effect on pro-environmental behaviour. These are beliefs, values, personality, self-efficacy and locus of control. These are things which are somewhat inherent to a person – they can be changed, but only with great difficulty.

Beliefs are what we regard as true, our opinions. They depend on confidence in the existence of something not amenable for rigorous testing or truth. They can be influenced by our environment (school, home, religion) and by what we hear in the media. There is little direct correlation between general beliefs and behaviour. Specific beliefs should influence behaviour in order to reduce cognitive dissonance, but may be discounted if they prove too difficult to follow through on.

Values are our principles and standards. They explore the relative worth or salience of ideas and relations. Fundamental values define what we believe to be important and how we believe things should be. These abstract notions of rightness or desirability can be thought of as a deeply held prejudice; some are so deeply held that they alone can explain behaviour. Preferences, motivations, aim objectives are weakly held values. Values can inform several attitudes; someone with anthropocentric values will think differently on many issues than someone with ecocentric values (Werner and Makela, 1998). If these values are widely shared they are made concrete in laws.

Personality is what you project to those around you and is made up of the traits we so readily use to identify someone, like shyness, honesty etc.

Self-efficacy is how effective you think you are in and it is very important in determining whether someone will act or not. If a person believes that his or her actions will be effective in bringing about a result, they are more likely to act. Locus of control is a related concept and refers to where one believes control for events lies, within oneself or in outside forces. If someone believes they have control over events they are more likely to act.

Practical Factors

Skills refer to practical skills that a person has – this can be things such as recycling or how to ride a bicycle. In order for action to take place, a person has to know how to do it. They also have to know that the possibility for a certain action exists, to have a knowledge of strategies that they can undertake.

Knowledge

Knowledge concerns one’s being acquainted with facts. Today, knowledge is generally considered more important than belief, although it is still true that convictions are respected. Knowledge often comes directly from what we learn explicitly, most often through education. Education is usually thought of as what we do at school, but it often takes the form of pamphlets, media ads, books and television shows. It is quite often used in an attempt to change behaviour - the idea is usually that if people only knew what they were doing and had a new way to behave, they would be so horrified that they would change immediately. Research has found that it does not work quite that way. Knowledge of what we are doing and new behaviours is necessary but far from sufficient (Hungerford and Volk, 1990; Newhouse, 1990; Gudgion and Thomas, 1991).

Attitudes

Attitude refers to a feeling or disposition. Like a weather vane, these orientations are thought to be proxy, indicator or predictor of beliefs, values, and behaviours. Reams have been written about the supposed attitude-behaviour link. For the most part this has been done because behavioural data itself, either observed or self-reported, is scant.

There are two kinds of attitudes: those regarding general factors such as the environment in general, and those regarding specific behaviours that a person could undertake.
The research that has been carried out shows there is little correlation between general attitudes and behaviour (Hungerford and Volk, 1990; Newhouse, 1990; Gudgion and Thomas, 1991). While there is little correlation between general attitudes and behaviour, attitudes can be thought of as enabling factors for the behaviour.

There is more correlation between attitudes toward specific behaviours and the behaviour itself. If a person has a positive attitude towards recycling, he or she is more likely to recycle. Social marketing can be very effective at changing specific attitudes (Werner and Makela, 1998). Issue specific education can also be used. However, both of these can lead to "learners who may act in an environmentally positive manner with relation to one issue (or set of issues), but who do not have the knowledge, skills, and willingness to assume environmental responsibility in their day-to-day lives," (Hungerford and Volk, 1990 p. 17).

Life Experience

Habits, the things we do without really thinking about them, are an important barrier to overcome. It is much easier to do what we have always done than it is to do something new that requires thought and learning.

Experience also informs what we do, as well as informing our beliefs, values, skills and a host of other factors. Most environmental attitudes are formed due to life experiences, such as childhood hiking trips or positive experience with animals. It has also been suggested that a major influence for people involved in conservation movements is the sense of loss experienced from watching the destruction of a cherished wild land (Newhouse, 1990). However, it can also be a negative factor in beginning a more sustainable action because quite often they represent a break from what our experience has told us is the "right" way to live.

Relations to Others

Self-concept is what a person believes about him or herself. Most people want to have feel good about themselves so they try to behave and think about themselves in ways that accent the positive. Therefore, they need to maintain consistency between their words and their actions. They also need to show commitment by following through on their promises, especially those that result in behaviours that are active, public, effortful and freely chosen. Addressing these needs, such as through social marketing, leads to the most sustained individual behaviour changes (Werner and Makela, 1998).

Personal norms are what we think we ought to do and are motivated by our need to maintain a positive self-concept. "To violate a personal norm engenders guilt, and to uphold a personal norm engenders pride," (Schwartz, 1977, in Werner and Makela, 1998). People will generally behave in a way determined by the possibility of solving the problem and their perceived responsibility for it, up until the point where it conflicts with their private interests, at which point most people will activate mental defense strategies such as denial (Ölander and Thøgersen, 1995).

On the Spot Evaluations

On the spot evaluations are those calculations we do when we are faced with the possibility of doing something out of the ordinary, for example stopping at the side of the road to ask if someone needs help. We calculate the need for the behaviour: Is it dark? How many other people are likely to come along? Can we even help? We also calculate its consequences: Will it make me late? Is it a trap? Will it be Bill Gates who will give me millions of dollars? Finally, we calculate our personal responsibility for the behaviour: How does it compute with who we think we are? Will anyone know?

External Determinants of Behaviour

Social Factors

Social structure is the patterns of social relationships that construct society. It is the organization of society, including all its major institutions, social groups, and social positions as a set of interrelated parts. Social structure affects our most intimate behaviour as well as our behaviour in larger organizational settings. Social structure refers to the practical or instrumental aspects of social relations, it is the invisible rules and regulation that establish routines, which among other things, distinguishes us from the rest of nature. Social factors heavily influence our motivation because they play to our desires to be thought of as responsible citizens, to be accepted and respected by others, to conform to group/societal norms and to receive praise form our group/society. Social incentives are public praise or censure and can be much more effective than financial rewards or regulation (Werner and Makela, 1998)

The social milieu refers to general social awareness towards a problem or need for collective action. Social milieus are strongly influenced by historically based differences in values and ways of thinking. Environmentally, they can be changed in the face or real or apparent shortages or highly visible problems such as polluted rivers. However, problems are often not noticed if they occur gradually over several years. The media can be helpful in bringing issues to the forefront, but they tend to move on to new issues rapidly, leaving the impression that the old ones have gone away. Social awareness by itself does not lead to people being persuaded to change, but sets the stage for it. Making problems visible and convincing seems the best way to do make people aware (Werner and Makela, 1998).

Social norms are what we think is socially appropriate and lead to behaviours designed to win social approval (Werner and Makela, 1998). Social norms are a strong predictor of behaviour, outweighing personal attitudes. Ajzen and Fishbein (1977, in Newhouse, 1990) found that attitudes only predict behaviour when there are no strong norms about it. Polls can also be influenced by perceived norms; respondents often respond how they believe they ought to think, whether or not they do think that way (Newhouse, 1990). Social norms that lead to behavioural change will become internalized as personal norms as the behaviour continues (Ölander and Thøgersen, 1995).

Location and Surroundings

A person’s location at a given time and place is one of the least likely to change but it effects almost everything that he or she does through economic, political, historical, geographical, cultural and ecological influences. Though a person cannot change much in relation to these forces, some of the forces or the interpretation of the forces themselves can change and exert a different influence upon the person.

Influencing Factors

Factors in the surroundings happen outside an individual, though they are filtered through his or her perceptions. Social norms, on the other hand, are experienced within the individual, but both influenced by and an influence on the surroundings. Figure 3 shows the influences on a person from surroundings and social norms. Both exert three kinds of influence on the individual – these are the same three kinds as in the Precede-Proceed Model: predisposing factors which affect our knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, personal norms, self-concept, education or locus of control, enabling factors which affect our skills and knowledge of strategies or change the surroundings, and reinforcing factors which provide feedback on what we have done and which can affect our self-concept, self-efficacy, locus of control, experience as well as our knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and values.

Figure 3: External Determinants of Behaviour

Taking Action

The Action Process

When we are faced with the possibility of doing something new we can choose to do nothing or what we’re used to doing – this is quite often what we end up doing. Doing something new requires first that we form the motivation to do it. This in itself does not automatically lead to action because it is easy to go from motivation into denial; if we think it is not our responsibility or it is too hard, we can do our habitual action. However, denial can also lead back to motivation if the reasons for denial do not seem strong enough. From motivation we can also form the intention to act, which again is not enough because it can lead back to denial and either no action or a reformulation of motivation and intention; we have all had intentions to do things that we have not actually done. Both the surroundings and social norms strongly influence this cycle: how easy or difficult something is both to actually do and in the eyes of our peers influences the outcome of this cycle and whether we do what we’re used to or a new stewardship action.

Figure 4: Taking Action

Effects of Actions

Our actions and the actions of others have a reinforcing effect on ourselves, an effect on the surroundings, and an effect on social norms. With enough stewardship actions we can achieve the goals of increased social capital, a decreased ecological footprint, a green economy and the formation of a stewardship ethic – all of which will help us reach a sustainable society.

Figure 5: Effects of Actions

Change Strategies

Going back to the Precede-Proceed Model we can see that we have now reached Phase 5, designing strategies to bring about behaviour change. These change strategies or programs and actions can try to affect various parts of this cycle and bring about behavioural change by trying to change our surroundings, by trying to predispose us to do things through changing our knowledge attitudes, beliefs and values, by directly affecting our social norms, enabling us to do things by giving us skills, by making our actions possible and by reinforcing actions we take. Applying these change strategies to the behaviour model we have been developing, we can see how they could affect various parts of the cycle.

Figure 6: Change Strategies

The Source of the Problem

It is important that change strategies be used together to address the fundamental problem. Too often, change strategies are used in isolation. For an illustration, I usually think of an old computer game that I have reproduced here. The Earth is under attack from the sky from nasty laser beams which, if not stopped immediately, split infinitely, as shown by the left-hand beam. Each particular laser beam needs to be stopped, otherwise it destroys the houses and the canon. So, as you can see, it makes a lot of sense to stop the laser beam as soon as it appears, as has happened with the right-hand beam.

I think of the three houses as social, economic and environmental sustainability. We are the laser cannon on top of the hill trying to save these houses from what our society is throwing at them, but on the left we are using policies aimed at the symptom rather than the source. We try to address each of the problems brought about by our lifestyle individually, but it is impossible to keep up with the splits of the laser beam. Eventually we will miss one which will cause irreparable damage to the Earth. What we need to do is stop the laser beam when it first appears – stop our maladaptive behaviour at its source.

Figure 6: It is much easier to stop something at its source

By identifying and targeting the factors which are the most basic and which inform our actions the most, we can influence many behaviours simultaneously, rather than trying to pick them off one by one before they destroy us. This would enable us to begin to consider what the effects of each behaviour on the global ecosystem, which would inform the rest of our choices and hopefully lead to a new way of looking at things.

From the discussion of internal factors above, changing fundamental values and social factors seem to hold the most promise for effecting long-term, fundamental change. Social norms in particular influence us on many levels and are more powerful than most any other one factor in determining our behaviour. Actions that we undertake because our social norms say we must become internalized because of cognitive dissonance. That is to say, if we begin to do something such as recycling because everyone else is doing it, it does not take very long before we think that it was our idea to do it. This happens because we want to believe we are consistent, so, if our believes and our actions are different, we have to change one of them – beliefs are often easier to change than actions. It also follows that an internalized norm has the potential to affect many more actions – maybe not bring about behaviour change in other areas, but definitely make it more likely.

Social norms could also be called our paradigm, or our myth, or our way of living. Social norms are what we perceive others to want us to do and what is "cool" and are especially prevalent in the area of consumption. They affect us deeply because humans are inherently social and crave approval from others. However, norms are not inherent to our natures, but can be changed – for example our current consumption norms are a result of marketing strategies in the 1950s which encouraged our level of consumption to develop a market for goods from wartime factories.

Accordingly, the best way to effect social change may be to make sustainable behaviours the social norm and non-sustaining behaviours "un-cool." If sustainable behaviour were the norm that people were striving for and they thought that sustainability was the only way to be, then they would exert influence on policy and social institutions to get them to change.

There are no simple ways to achieve this – it will require a coordinated effort. A model for action is laid out in the next section, however, the goal driving this model should be as follows:

What one can hope to achieve – and certainly has to strive for – is the attainment, in [a] broad strata of the population, of an intrinsic motivation, an environmental ethics [sic] or internalized personal norm which carries over to a wide variety of behaviours and which produces lifelong behaviours that maintain environmental quality, (Ölander and Thøgersen, 1995 p. 376).

Change Strategies Logic Model

The logic model which we think can guide the implementation of change strategies is similar to the precede-proceed model, but assumes the original assessments have already been done and the direction of behaviour change that we would like to see has been determined, if not the exact changes. The logic model, found in Figure 8, starts out with what we discussed in the previous diagram, with all its complexity reduced to a single bi-directional arrow. It also assumes that we have looked at what in the individual and in the context is most amenable to change.

Figure 8: Change Strategies Logic Model

Change strategies of three kinds are then undertaken. Predisposing strategies are those which affect predisposing factors such as knowledge, believes, attitudes and values. These kinds of strategies are often the only ones undertaken; agencies and governments expect that when people know that they are doing something environmentally damaging they will cease and desist on their own. Research has found that it doesn’t quite work this way. Predisposing strategies can add to our knowledge and change our beliefs and they can increase the defensibility of attitudes or even change them, but alone they often do nothing to change behaviour except add guilt to our pleasures. Also, quite often you hear people say that we should just change the schools and the society of the future will be better; however, in order for education in schools to be effective, both teachers and parents need to believe in the message being taught. If parents don’t believe, they can undermine what their children are learning, or even fight what is being taught in schools.

At the opposite extreme are enabling strategies. They are not undertaken nearly often enough, which is a shame, because they can be very effective. However, one reason why they are not done used as often is that any proposal for a policy change which mandates genuine change is very hard to pass into law due to the nature of politics. Also, loopholes exist with even the most well written laws – this encourages people to obey only the letter of the law, not the spirit. Further, laws with person-level effects need either draconian enforcement or public buy-in. For example, in Florida in the 1970s there was a county that outlawed phosphate detergents. But because the public was not behind the change in laws, they came to believe that phosphate cleaners must be better than non and started organizing van caravans to stock up on phosphate detergents in other counties (Cialdini, 1988). Enforcement in cases like this is very expensive and difficult, and basically, the public needs to buy into any change of policy, or it won’t work. As Mark Roseland (1998) said

Environmental policy and environmental education must be seen as mutually dependant and supportive. Hence an environmental policy will not work without an informed population, while environmental education will not be effective if it is contradicted in wider society through environmental policy being weak or absent.

The third type of strategy is reinforcing strategies. There are two kinds of these: incentives and disincentives, which can both be social/intangible or financial/tangible. Positive reinforcement using tangible rewards can effect significant behavioural change when used well. However, change only lasts as long as the reinforcement does. It can be extended with intermittent reinforcement, but it does eventually die off. Further, using tangible incentives can actually lead to reduced natural interest; for example, if a person is composting and then gets offered money to do it, he or she will come to associate composting with being paid. If funding is then cut, the person will most likely stop recycling, even though they had done it before they got paid. Social incentives and disincentives have a stronger effect and last longer.

What all this has shown is that each of these types of strategy on its own can have an effect, but that effect is limited. However, what that leaves out is that each of these strategies and factors influence each other - strategies that work in concert with each other achieve a synergy, because they activate different things in people, each of which reinforces the others, and it is through this that the strategies then influence people through changing the predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors that they operate under. Hopefully, changes in these factors will lead to positive changes in behaviour and in the general community environment, which in turn will lead to an improved quality of life for all.

It is important to evaluate the change strategies and their effect on people through predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors, as well as the impact of those changes on behaviour and the community and environment and to keep an ongoing evaluation of how close we are to reaching our desired outcomes

Using this logic model to guide interventions might seem daunting, and indeed, it would not be possible for one person or agency to do all of these things. However, those who undertake to change behaviour should be aware of the need for multiple and integrated strategies and do their utmost to enable strategies in different areas. At the same time, individuals should anticipate these strategies and change their consumption patterns to prefer quality over quantity, and should examine what really is necessary in order to live in harmony with each other and the environment and change their behaviour accordingly. It will take both individuals and agencies to create a social norm of sustainability, a social norm we need if we are ever to live in a sustainable society.

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Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2002 by author

Harmony Folz
School of Community and Regional Planning,University of British Columbia

harmonyf@interchange.ubc.ca