Attitudes & Education: Promoting Pro-Environmental Actions, Lecture notes of Environmental Psychology

Download Attitudes & Education: Promoting Pro-Environmental Actions and more Lecture notes Environmental Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! How Overcome Commons Problems? – Attitudes and Education Change values How do so? How get people to adopt a “deep ecology” value system? Lapse between values and behaviors. Religions of India and China would seem to promote pro-environmental activities. Population pressures promote destructive behaviors. Educate to change attitudes and provide information Assumptions: We don’t have appropriate general or specific attitudes or we do not know what to do. Attitudes (even relatively specific attitudes) do not necessarily predict behavior. Attitudes tend to predict easy-to-do and low-cost behaviors (reset thermostats by a few degrees) but not more difficult or expensive behaviors (install weather stripping, buy energy efficient refrigerator or AC). Attitudes towards picking up litter vs. picking up litter (94% endorse attitude and 1.4% engage in behavior) Attitudes toward recycling vs. recycling: Scale of 1-anti-attitude and 5–pro-attitude. Recyclers 4.13 and Non-recyclers 4.02. Big differences in real or perceived barriers. Barriers and use of public transportation or bicycles. Also: anti-env. attitudes can accompany pro- env. behavior – save energy b/c of cost, not attitude. Education implies lack of knowledge – not knowing what to do is the cause of anti-environmental behavior. Simple items vs. difficult items. Credibility of source of information – ‘bill stuffers’ in utility company statements usually not even read. Home energy audits – provide information about what can do to save energy. Few evaluations. Those conducted indicate minimally effective. Why not effective? Information not credible. Information going into the audit not reasonable. Information about benefits not reasonable. Information not vivid or personal. Stress savings not costs. Need demonstrations of air infiltration. Failure to obtain commitment. Foot-in-the-door-technique. Make participation and results public information (p.484). Failure to use models, e.g., block leaders. (Adopt a highway). Audits based on rational-economic model of human behavior (engineering approach) vs. psychological model (marketing or sales approach). Docsity.com