Encouraging Sustainable Behavior

Increasingly it is being recognized that consumer behavior may be a key trigger in the march toward sustainable development. Several lines of psychological theory and approaches have been developed relatively independently, each of which may provide major implications and action points on how consumers might be moved toward more sustainable behavior. This book is the first that brings together this variety of perspectives and theoretical angles around the common ambition of sustainable development. The contributors are all leading social scientists in the field of consumer behavior who met the challenge to sketch out their theoretical perspectives, but also to go beyond their normal theorizing and think out of the box in order to show how these theoretical perspectives might be made actionable in terms of key managerial and policy perspectives toward sustainable development. The result is a book that shows a wealth of information and approaches the question of how to encourage sustainable behavior from a myriad of divergent perspectives. This should stimulate scientists and policy-makers alike to find similarities, differences, and synergies between state-of-the-art psychological thinking about how to most effectively stimulate sustainable consumer behavior.

The highly acclaimed manual for changing everyday habits-now in an all-newthird edition! We are consuming resources and polluting our environment at a rate that is outstripping our planet's ability to support us. To create a sustainable future, we must not only change our own actions, we must educate and encourage those around us to change theirs. If one individual recycles his plastic containers, the impact is minimal. But if an entire community recycles, enormous amounts of resources are saved. How then do we go about transforming people's good intentions into action? Fostering Sustainable Behavior explains how the field of community-based social marketing has emerged as an effective tool for encouraging positive social change. This completely revised and updated third edition contains a wealth of new research, behavior change tools, and case studies. Learn how to: target unsustainable behaviors, and identify the barriers to change understand various commitment strategies communicate effective messages enhance motivation and invite participation. The strategies introduced in this ground-breaking manual are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in promoting sustainable behavior, including environmental conservation, recycling and waste reduction, water and energyefficiency and alternative transportation.

Encouraging Pro-Environmental Behavior: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why examines the main drivers of human behavior related to environmental sustainability and how we can encourage environmental behavior change in humans. The book explores the underlying barriers and enablers of environmental behavior and outlines key theoretical advances from psychology to improve understanding. It then uses theory-based research in the development of behavior change interventions to critically evaluate empirical evidence on the effectiveness of those interventions. This book will help inform and improve the success of behavior change initiatives to mitigate climate change. Explores what influences behavior: who conserves and why Includes both theory and practice Focuses on water and energy use, food choice and travel behavior Identifies impacts of incentives and interventions

This book advances the tourism and hospitality industry’s contribution to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 of responsible consumption and production. It enables a collaboration platform across these sectors in pursuit of common goals for promoting sustainable consumption and environmental protection. Sustainable consumer behavior is a principal topic in the current tourism and hospitality industry as many types of unsustainable consumptions pose a threat to society and the natural environment. Sustainable consumer behavior is a vital facet of protecting the environment that ultimately benefits the entire society. Individuals’ irresponsible consumption activities are undeniably considerable elicitors of harmful environmental, social, economic, and economic impacts throughout the world. Comprehending sustainable consumer behavior is of utmost importance for the tourism and hospitality industry to design innovative and responsible strategies to minimize the negative consequences of tourism. The scope of this book includes various sustainable consumptions, productions, and consumer behaviors in a variety of tourism and hospitality sectors and will be of great value to students, scholars, and researchers interested in areas such as sustainable consumer behaviour, hospitality, sustainable development, and tourism management. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

This forward-looking volume examines the role of social influence--including social media--in creating and fostering sustainable consumer behavior. Using the concepts behind social influence theory as a launching point, it describes humans' need for social networks and identifies the core components of buying, such as consumer goals and the gathering of opinions. From here, chapters examine ways social influence can encourage and support sustainable consumption, from buying green products to recycling packaging materials to supporting environmentally responsible brands. Real-world examples, critical thinking questions, a breakdown of strategies for influencing behavior, and pertinent references give the book extra dimensions of value. Among the featured topics: Social influence: why it matters. Values, attitudes, opinions, goals, and motivation. What we buy and who we listen to: the science and art of consumption. Decision making and problem solving. Households: productivity and consumption. Sustainably managing resources in the built environment. Between its nuanced understanding of social connections and its up-to-date lens on technology, Social Influence and Sustainable Consumption is must reading for researchers in the fields of consumer psychology, consumer behavior, and consumer sustainability.

There are many ways we can empower ourselves, and those around us, to live more sustainably. Psychology, the study of human behavior, offers many insights. The purpose of this handbook is to introduce you to research-based tips from psychology to help you in your personal, community, and workplace efforts to empower sustainability. The recommendations are based on empirical research; most of the studies described here have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. This document represents many years of psychological studies. Psychology is a diverse field with many contributions to make. I have summarized the studies and findings most relevant to sustainability and sustainable behavior change.

This book offers an integral perspective about strategies to change consumer behavior and promote sustainable consumption. It combines theories, concepts, and methodologies from a variety of disciplines, to facilitate the conception and design process of sustainable products, services, processes, strategies and consumption patterns, from start to finish. This guide takes into consideration consumer types, the process the human brain undertakes to perform a behavior, the internal and external factors that influence it, and the motivation, ability, and triggers necessary to perform it. This book explains sustainable design and consumer behavior change strategies and instruments. Using the roadmap tool, it suggests a path to ease both the understanding and the conceptual process to readers.

Promoting sustainable behaviour is a critical part of society’s response to climate change. This short, practical book shows you how to build a sustainable behaviour campaign that works. There are more and less effective ways for businesses, NGOs and governments to encourage people to act in a more sustainable way, and some common pitfalls to avoid. By summarizing "what really works" and pulling out the most important take-home messages from the evidence base, this book contains all the tools you need to maximize the success of your sustainable behaviour initiative – in households, when commuting, in the workplace and beyond. By looking beyond individual behaviours to people’s sense of identity and values; by incorporating social signals that provide such important cues for our everyday behaviour; by pointing out strategies that attract (and keep) people’s interest; and by understanding how to break bad habits and create good ones, this guide offers the best chance of making a sustainable behaviour campaign work, to create a lasting change in behaviour.

In a competitive and complex world, where requirements from different fields are ever-growing, organizations need to be responsible for their actions in their respective markets. However, this responsibility must not be deemed one-time-only but instead should be seen as a continuous process, under which organizations ought to effectively use the different resources to allow them to meet the present and future requirements of their stakeholders. Having a significant influence on their collaborators performance, the role developed by managers and engineers is highly relevant to the sustainability of an organizations success. Conscious of this reality, this book contributes to the exchange of experiences and perspectives on the state of research related to sustainable management. Particular focus is given to the role that needs to be developed by managers and engineers, as well as to the future direction of this field of research.

Designing products to encourage sustainable behavior during their use can have a significant influence on their total environmental impact. Cognitive interventions can be used to inform users of the importance of sustainable behavior and make users aware of the resources they consume. These interventions can help users understand the consequences of their actions and evoke positive or negative emotions that can motivate them to adopt sustainable behavior. This paper investigated two methods of cognitive interventions: information and feedback. Positive and negative message framing of the informative intervention were also considered. The study examined the effectiveness of these interventions in encouraging users to reduce their napkin consumption in cafés. A survey was also conducted to understand the environmental concerns around napkin consumption as well as the emotions and perceived effectiveness of each intervention. The number of napkins per consumer in each café showed a short-term behavior change for positive information, a longer-term behavior change for negative information, and no behavior change for feedback. Results from 295 valid survey responses showed that the positively framed informative design reminded users to use less napkins in order to save more trees and was dominated by positive emotions such as feeling encouraged. The negative information message informed users to use less napkins and the consequences of napkin usage on the environment and was related to negative emotions such as guilt and worry. The feedback intervention’s message was more informative, reminding users that napkins come from trees and the emotions evoked from the intervention closely resembled that of the control. These findings suggest that information and feedback interventions that evoke emotions can be used to promote sustainable behavior.