Yikes! Huge Disconnect Between Environmental Attitude & Behavior

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

This article originally appeared on CleanTechnica sister site The Inspired Economist. To learn about sustainable economics, see Special Reports by The Inspired Economist.

Image Credit: EnergyChangeMN
Image Credit: EnergyChangeMN

People frequently respond very positively to polling about environmental attitudes. Even in down years, a grand majority of people respond that they’re concerned about the environment (and/or describe themselves as “environmentalist” in attitude).

But the behavior often doesn’t follow the attitude, and it is perhaps the biggest missing link in creating real sustainable change. In the introductory workshop about Fostering Sustainable Behavior, Doug McKenzie Mohr described three programs that tried to help people turn their attitudes into behaviors.

First, an educator invited forty people to an energy efficiency workshop, and created a value perception by limiting attendees to the first forty people that called. The energy efficiency workshop educated people about how to save money on their energy bills and gave them a list of recommendations they could do in their homes. 40 people took the workshop. Of those, just 1 lowered hot water heater temp. 2 had wrapped their water heater in an insulating blanket. Only 8 of the 40 installed a high efficiency showerhead (and there was no price barrier–all 40 were given the high efficiency showerheads during the workshop).

The second program included a water-wise program, where participants were sent mailers about wasteful water use, the water-energy relationship, and conservation methods that would help them not only reduce their water bills, but also their impact. Net result? None.

Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!

The third program included surveys sent to a large proportion of residents, 94% of whom acknowledged that we all had a part to play in cleaning up litter. The researchers then placed litter right in front of the person’s front door, so they’d see it first thing in the morning when they left the house. The result? 2% of the people picked up the litter.

So what about doing the job for people? Programs in the U.S. to do energy audits and make concentrated recommendation lists to folks have seen little to no results. The government spent $760 per house, many billions of dollars, to provide free energy audits for households. In addition, to facilitate action, they also offered low/no interest loans for retrofits and a list of qualified contractors that could do things like insulation, weatherization, and the like. The results? Only 6% of people requested audits. Of those, only half acted on the recommendations given by the auditors. Total savings? 2-3%.

To make matters worse, people on the waiting list ended up doing 30% of the changes and upgrades before the audit came anyway. So overall, only 1% of the actual energy savings could be attributed to the program at all.

So how do we create more effective behavioral change programs? Check out Effective behavior change programs for sustainability, a 3 page summary of Doug McKenzie Mohr’s workshop on effective community based social marketing.


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Scott Cooney

Scott Cooney (twitter: scottcooney) is a serial eco-entrepreneur focused on making the world a better place for all its residents. Scott is the founder of CleanTechnica and was just smart enough to hire someone smarter than him to run it. He then started Pono Home, a service that greens homes, which has performed efficiency retrofits on more than 16,000 homes and small businesses, reducing carbon pollution by more than 27 million pounds a year and saving customers more than $6.3 million a year on their utilities. In a previous life, Scott was an adjunct professor of Sustainability in the MBA program at the University of Hawai'i, and author of Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill) , and Green Living Ideas.

Scott Cooney has 147 posts and counting. See all posts by Scott Cooney