I am not telling you anything new if I say that we are in a very complex ecological context, we are already at COP 26 and yet we are still sceptical about the inaction of our governments in dealing with environmental problems. According to the IPCC, individual behaviour that harms the environment is responsible for ecological damage and is a threat to society. Changes in individual behaviour are therefore essential for the energy and environmental transition. The ecological behaviour of individuals and its impact on the natural environment is a matter of public interest and the subject of a considerable amount of psychological research, especially in social and environmental psychology.
So it is only when people are motivated to change their behaviour, to reduce their consumption of non-essential products and personal benefits that we can avoid catastrophe, and thus reduce the energy consumption of societies.
But this is not as easy to say as it is to do… Indeed, according to established psychological models, our behaviour is determined by a large number of factors such as
- The intention to do the behaviour: do I want to do this behaviour or not?
- The norm in which we find ourselves: What do my relatives think of this? What does my society put in place for this behaviour? – The motivation for doing the behaviour: Why do I want to do this?
- The belief that we have, our assessment of the situation: I think that my behaviours will have an impact on the climate situation or not.
- And finally, our beliefs about the situation: some people do not believe that global warming exists, so why would they change their behaviour?
This is called the Theory of Planned Behavior, which studies how we can predict behaviour.
It is in this way that we observe differences between individuals with regard to pro-environmental behaviour… Indeed, an individual will be ready to adopt a behaviour concerning one aspect of environmental protection but may be indifferent to other aspects… For example, Mrs X may be very attentive to the sorting of her waste but on the other hand she will always ask for a plastic bag at the grocery shop to take her vegetables away…
In addition, there are many categories of behaviour in favour of the environment. For example, we can demonstrate for this cause. We can also support associations and sign petitions such as WWF or Zero Waste. There are also all the behaviours in the private sphere, at home! There are a lot of them, such as waste sorting, choice of transport, energy consumption or global consumption! And finally, there are the behaviours that we cannot influence directly, which influence large industries and companies.
Taking all these things into account, it is easy to understand why it is so difficult for most of us to engage in the ecological transition.
If you want to learn more about how to adopt pro-environmental behavior on a daily basis, I invite you to listen to my podcast available on this blog “Towards eco-responsibility on a daily basis”.
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Kaiser, F. G. (1998). A General Measure of Ecological Behavior1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(5), 395‑422. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01712.x
Labbouz, D., Brisepierre, G., Auzoult, L., & Borel, C. (2020). TRANSPHERES : Les transferts de pratiques environnementales entre les sphères professionnelles et personnelles. https://www.ademe.fr/transpheres-transferts-pratiques-environnementales-entre-spheres-professionnelles-personnelles
Ajzen, I. (1985). From Intentions to Actions : A Theory of Planned Behavior. In J. Kuhl & J.Beckmann (Éds.), Action Control (p. 11‑39). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69746-3_2Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179‑211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T