Hello everyone i’m happy to join you, Welcome to our podcast of the master of social psychology, today I’m going to talk about “behaviors” but not just any behaviors. Nowadays, we are more than ever at the center of environmental concerns and the climate emergency requires us to find the best way to adopt behaviors in favor of the environment. This is, as you may have guessed, the topic of the day!
A behavior in favor of the environment is a behavior adopted by an individual who decides, in a conscious way, to minimize his negative impacts on the natural and built environments. In the jargon, this is called pro-environmental behavior or PEB. I’m going to use this term a lot, so hold on to it! Before giving you the tools to integrate PEB into your daily life, I would like to come back to a more psychological aspect and explain why PEB is a special case.
There are several categories of PEBs, but the one we are interested in concerns individual daily behaviors because these are the ones we can act on directly. This case of behavior is particular because a person who will adopt PEB in one area may not adopt others. Let me explain:
Let’s take a person who takes the bicycle every morning. He wants to reduce his impact compared to someone who uses the car everyday. Well, nothing tells us that the same person will sort his waste or that he has reduced his meat consumption.
And that’s what makes PEB special, is that they are not correlated with each other. In fact, pro-environmental person is very complex and will situate his ecological priorities at his own level, tackling a different piece than another person according to his convictions, his values but also his means.
Indeed, we are not all equal in front of the PEB, I repeat my example of the bicycle : Imagine an person, a tall young man comes back from work every evening on his bicycle, he is strong, he is confident, he comes back without even asking himself the question of security. Now an oder person, a young girl, who wants to accomplish the same behavior. But she has to pass through a neighborhood in which she does not feel safe, and after a few days of biking, she abandons this behavior in front of the remarks that she can suffer from the locals of the street… and that’s a shame.
On another level, an other example, it may appear simple to isolate your house to reduce your electricity bill, but you still need to have the means to do so.
Well, I think you’ve understood what PEBs are and what makes them complicated to install. It’s true, they are determined by our intentions, our motivations, our knowledge of the subject and many other factors that we can’t control.
Now, I will give you some examples of actions that can be done on a daily basis quite simply. But no pressure! Everyone goes at their own personal pace.
Not surprisingly, most of the advice I will give you concerns consumption. Indeed, reducing your consumption in various areas is a big step for the ecological transition
- Reducing your electricity consumption is for example making a hot water bottle or putting on a big sweater instead of turning on the heating. Every degree counts.
- Decreasing water consumption is already taking a shower instead of a bath, and once under the shower, put on your favorite music and do your best to get out of the shower before the end of the music … This allows you to realize the time spent in the shower and limit to about 3 or 4 minutes
- Reduce your consumption of clothes, buy second hand, or repair clothes when possible
- For food, we can try to eat less meat, it can be fun to reinvent the classics of French gastronomy but without meat. We can also prefer local and seasonal foods. Moreover, it allows us to vary our menus according to the time of the year. We reconnect with nature and the seasons!
Now without talking about consumption, there are other possibilities as quoted in an example above, we can try to take the bicycle or to walk as much as possible rather than to take the car for small trips. If we travel alone we try to take the train and other public transports.
And of course, don’t forget to sort your waste according to the legislation of your city, cardboard, paper, glass, and so on, all this can be recycled and allow us to extend the life of our materials.
Well, it may seem difficult said like that, I attack many spheres of the daily life, but reassure you, anyway we can not do everything at once … It will take you time, do not hesitate to join a group on social networks that will help you adopt small behaviors more and more. Try to take your family and friends with you, it will be easier.
And if you want more information, don’t hesitate to visit the ADEME website (Agency for the Environment and Energy Management). This was my very last tips ! this is the end of this podcast.
Thank you a lot for listening today, it was a real pleasure for me to do this ! See you next time for more tips.
Kaiser, F. G., Wölfing, S., & Fuhrer, U. (1999). ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE AND ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19(1), 1‑19. https://doi.org/10.1006/jevp.1998.0107
Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002). Mind the Gap : Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research, 8(3), 239‑260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220145401
Stern, P. C. (2000). New Environmental Theories : Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 407‑424. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00175