Decision Making for the Environment Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities (2005) / Chapter Skim
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5 Environmentally Significant Individual Behavior
5 Environmentally Significant Individual Behavior
Pages 69-84
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From page 69... ...
5 Environmentally Significant Individual Behavior Federal agencies should support a concerted research effort to better understand and inform environmentally significant decisions by individuals. Research in four specific areas could provide usable results in the relatively near term: (1)
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From page 70... ...
They presume that, with better information, people will act in more environmentally beneficial ways. But the record of environmental information programs is unimpressive (Hirst, Berry, and Soderstrom, 1981; National Research Council, 1984, 2002a)
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Also, environmental policies and programs that rely on regulatory or incentive strategies can fall far short of their potential if their information components are not implemented effectively. For example, identical incentive programs operated by different energy utility companies differed by more than a factor of 10 in their effects as a function of how the programs were marketed (Stern et al., 1986)
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respondents surveyed in 2001 said they thought environmental regulations had not gone far enough, compared with 21 percent who said they had gone too far. The comparable figures were 34 and 13 percent in 1973, when the question was first asked.
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From page 73... ...
. It may be possible to aggregate the environmental indicators for various consumer products and services into indicators for the companies that provide these goods and services in ways that could usefully inform individuals' investment decisions.
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From page 74... ...
It is sometimes assumed that lack of information is the main barrier to action and that informing or educating consumers will automatically lead to desired choices and behaviors. However, environmental programs that rely on disseminating information about behaviors and how to perform them have been notoriously ineffective on average for promoting the desired behaviors (Ester and Winett, 1982; Geller, Winett, and Everett, 1982; Hirst, Berry, and Soderstrom, 1982; National Research Council, 1984; Gardner and Stern, 2002)
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From page 75... ...
An example is the creation of a web site by Environmental Defense to make information from the federal government's Toxics Release Inventory more readily interpretable by nonexperts (Herb et al., 2002)
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The recommended research could fruitfully address general questions such as these: · How effective are existing environmental information delivery systems? · What are their limitations as primary sources of information?
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From page 77... ...
Policy strategies that have been developed to accomplish these goals include incentives, rebates, tax benefits, cost sharing, prohibitions, regulations, codes, standards, and the provision of infrastructure. The information component to such policies and programs involves making people aware of program opportunities and requirements, providing general guidance and detailed technical assistance on adoption or compliance and showing how particular patterns of voluntary choice will contribute to desired personal, social, and environmental outcomes.
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From page 78... ...
78 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT challenges. One is methodological, involving the evaluation of an intervention that depends on the combined effect of several policy elements.
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From page 79... ...
ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR 79 including household energy use (e.g., Black et al., 1985; Poortinga, Steg, and Vlek, 2004) , travel behavior (e.g., Bamberg and Schmidt, 2003; Katzev, 2003; Brown et al., 2003)
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80 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT environmental implications of their purchases? That advertising has drawn consumers' attention away from the environmental attributes of products?
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An infusion of research funds has a high likelihood of turning the continuing interest in environmental topics among senior and young social scientists into significant contributions to policy-relevant knowledge for U.S. decision makers.
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From page 82... ...
Cooperation among researchers, environmental agencies, intermediaries, and likely users is desirable for making indicators useful and credible. Improved understanding of information transmission systems would be useful for government agencies that require or provide environmental information, particularly to achieve environmental goals that may be difficult to achieve by regulation or economic policy instruments; firms that supply environmental information and have reputation concerns; and trade associations, investment advisers, and nongovernmental organizations that might act as intermediaries or monitors in complex information transmission systems.
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From page 83... ...
Improved fundamental understanding of the dynamics of choice and constraint would be useful to environmental forecasting enterprises and the designers of environmental policy instruments: firms and governments concerned with strategic targeting of messages, incentives, and products. It would provide policy makers with background information regarding the relative potential for informational and other policy instruments both alone and in combination; the limits of informational interventions and the places where barriers would need to be removed if information is to be effective; the kinds of information that should be targeted to different types of audiences (e.g., individuals acting for themselves, intermediaries, people acting on behalf of the organizations)
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From page 84... ...
84 DECISION MAKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT The use of the results of the recommended research is likely to depend significantly on the quality of communication between researchers and the potential users of their findings. Particularly because much of the recommended research would be locally based, communications networks will be important for promoting the diffusion of insights from such research to other places where they might be applied.
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