by Eric Worrall at wattsupwiththat.com
“… social pressure had the strongest effect on behavioral change. Such pressure can take passive forms, … or more active ones, such as home energy reports that compare our energy use with our neighbors …”
What Makes People Act on Climate Change, according to Behavioral Science
To get people to shift to more climate-friendly behavior, what works best? Education? Payments? Peer pressure?
By Andrea Thompson on April 19, 2023
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Though education can be necessary to make the public aware of a problem in the first place, “we find over and over again that it’s not very effective” at actually changing behaviors, says study co-author Magnus Bergquist, a psychologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. It’s similar to how knowing that we should exercise more or drink less alcohol doesn’t mean we will do so, he explains. “Just knowing what’s right, or healthy, or environmentally friendly isn’t really a sufficient model for changing behaviors,” Bergquist says.
On the flip side, the new research found social pressure had the strongest effect on behavioral change. Such pressure can take passive forms, such as the sight of a larger number of our neighbors adding solar panels to their houses or purchasing electric cars, or more active ones, such as home energy reports that compare our energy use with our neighbors’.
“… social pressure had the strongest effect on behavioral change. Such pressure can take passive forms, … or more active ones, such as home energy reports that compare our energy use with our neighbors …”
What Makes People Act on Climate Change, according to Behavioral Science
To get people to shift to more climate-friendly behavior, what works best? Education? Payments? Peer pressure?
By Andrea Thompson on April 19, 2023
…
Though education can be necessary to make the public aware of a problem in the first place, “we find over and over again that it’s not very effective” at actually changing behaviors, says study co-author Magnus Bergquist, a psychologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. It’s similar to how knowing that we should exercise more or drink less alcohol doesn’t mean we will do so, he explains. “Just knowing what’s right, or healthy, or environmentally friendly isn’t really a sufficient model for changing behaviors,” Bergquist says.
On the flip side, the new research found social pressure had the strongest effect on behavioral change. Such pressure can take passive forms, such as the sight of a larger number of our neighbors adding solar panels to their houses or purchasing electric cars, or more active ones, such as home energy reports that compare our energy use with our neighbors’.
Can you smell the whiff of Chinese social credit systems – in which the government increasingly becomes involved in bullying people who don’t conform to the direction of their leaders?
What’s next? Fines and withdrawal of privileges if you don’t reduce your energy to levels dictated by local politicians, or swap your ICE automobile for an EV? Neighbourhood interventions, in which all your neighbours visit in a group to explain about their climate anxiety, about all the misery and distress your non compliance is causing? A “climate inquisition”, which coerces ordinary people reported by their neighbours into publicly confess their climate sins, and promising to do better in the future?
How could such a thing happen in America, or in any Western country?
Right now, today, such cruelty until recently was a far-fetched joke, a subject for comedy sketches about un-American behaviour. The right to make your own choices, freedom from social bullying, is a defining difference between free societies like America and communist tyrannies like Communist China.
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