It wouldn’t be a project around environmental conservation without some nifty acronyms.
And Making Shift Happen, a comprehensive guide for designing successful environmental behavior change, does not disappoint.
The authors of Making Shift Happen, Nya Van Leuvan, Lauren Highleyman, Rod Fujita, Ashleigh Kellerman, have an impressive set of expertise around environmental conservation, human behavior, behavior change, and change strategy spread out across the 4 of them.
Their book is divided into several parts, the largest and most prominent being a thorough breakdown of BEHAVIORAL Building Blocks.
Just as building blocks are used to construct a building, BEHAVIORAL building blocks serve as the fundamental elements used to create and shape our behaviors.
They stand for:
Belonging
Easy
Habits
Attachment
Vivid
Identity
Optimism
Rewards
Associations
Longevity
Fun acronym, right?
While I’ll leave the in-depth analysis of these building blocks to the experts who wrote Making Shift Happen, let’s explore just a bit more about each.
Highlight norms to elevate BELONGING
" True belonging does not require us to change who we; it requires us to be who we are." - Brené Brown
The need for belonging is a fundamental human desire. And leveraging that understanding is crucial to driving behavior change.
People are more likely to adopt behaviors that align with their social group or community. Not only is conformity easier as it requires less thought and mental stress, but there is also safety in numbers.
By highlighting existing norms or engineering new ones, we can create a sense of belonging and encourage people to conform to desired behaviors.
Tangible steps to elevate belonging:
Fostering a sense of community
Leverage social proof
Encourage peer-to-peer support
Make it EASY
One of the key points in James Clear’s book Atomic Habits is to make the habit you are trying to build as easy as possible to ensure its completion.
For example, if you want to build a habit around reading every day, NEVER start out with an ambitious goal of reading for 2 hours before bed. Instead, Clear suggests that you set an incredibly easy goal, such as reading for only 2 min a day.
The reasoning is fairly intuitive: the easier the behavior is, the more likely you are to achieve it.
The concept of making it easy focuses on reducing barriers to make it effortless for people to adopt the desired behavior.
This both increases the likelihood of adoption and the likelihood of those behaviors to be sustained over time.
Tangible steps to make things easy:
Remove obstacles
Provide clear instructions and guidance
Offer incentives
Cultivate powerful HABITS
Piggybacking off of the Easy building block, habits make behavior change widely more successful.
Have you ever been trying to drive to a friend’s house but you accidentally took the exit to your office because the habit of driving to work was just so ingrained in your brain?
I definitely have.
Habits are critical parts of our lives. They allow us to turn on autopilot and just coast. They help us save energy and make our days more productive. They grant consistency, reliability, and predictability in everyday life.
And they are also key elements to making any desired behavior change stick.
Tangible steps to cultivate lasting habits:
Start small and build gradually
Create habit triggers
Track progress and celebrate achievements
Activate ATTACHMENT
“If we can teach people about wildlife, they will be touched. Share my wildlife with me. Because humans want to save things that they love.” - Steve Irwin
When people feel emotionally connected to a cause or behavior, they are more likely to be motivated to take action.
Several months ago my mother told me a story of a conservationist (whose name I can’t remember) who specialized in protecting and restoring forests around America.
One day she was faced with a seemingly impossible task: convincing her husband’s baseball team to care about trees.
But this conservationist took a unique approach. Instead of using reasoning that was meaningful to people like herself, she met the baseball players where they were.
She focused on baseball bats.
Bats are essential to the sport of baseball. Bats are made out of a specific type of wood. That wood comes from trees and forests. Those trees and forests are being threatened.
And all of a sudden the players started to care about the forests. Not because this conservationist pounded them with statistics but because she made the conservation of trees personal to them.
Attaching behaviors to personal values, experiences, or identities makes them more meaningful and relevant.
Tangible steps to activate attatchement:
Personalize the experience.
Tell stories and use narratives.
Involve the senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) to make it more memorable.
Design it to be VIVID
Vivid experiences are more memorable and likely to influence behavior.
Similarly, vivid imagery and storytelling can evoke emotions and inspire action.
By leveraging this understanding, you can design scenarios that stand out (either positively or negatively) to motivate a change.
When I was about 12 years old, I watched the documentary Blackfish, a film that explores the controversial captivity of killer whales, focusing on a notorious orca involved in the deaths of three people.
The film is beyond vivid, showing both censored and uncensored scenes on the state of the orcas’ captivity and the brutal deaths of several trainers.
Because of how vivid and controversial that documentary was, it sparked a global campaign to end the captivity of highly intelligent and social animals such as orcas.
Keep in mind, vivid imagery and experiences don’t have to be negative to inspire action. Vivid positive storytelling can do the same thing. Go check out the Communications Pillar to learn more about it. ;)
Tangible steps to design vivid imagery:
Create vivid mental pictures.
Use storytelling.
Use sensory details.
Leverage our need for consisting IDENTITY
Generally speaking, the most effective way to get people on board with big changes is to appeal to their identity. Identities are crucially important to the human race as having an identity gives a sense of belonging, and contributes to wellbeing and confidence.
Unfortunately, people will naturally resist when a proposed change contradicts their identity.
But here's where it gets interesting.
If you can demonstrate to an individual that they are not acting in alignment with their identity OR that their actions are misaligned to what they aspire to be, they will be motivated to change.
One great example of this is the Don't Mess With Texas campaign. Texans are notorious for being very proud and loyal to their great state. As a native-born Texan, I can attest to this first-hand.
Knowing this, the Don't Mess With Texas campaign was able to leverage the identities of Texans to further environmental conservation.
This campaign is an anti-litter campaign. Texans are very proud of their state.
By demonstrating to Texans that keeping Texas streets beautiful aligned with their identities as proud Texans, the campaign became one of Texas's most successful litter-free programs.
Not only that, but the slogan Don't Mess With Texas inspired Texans to hold outsiders accountable as well. Texas is great, so don't mess with us or our beautiful state.
Our sense of self influences our behaviors. By aligning desired behaviors with our identity, we are more likely to adopt them.
And while motivation exclusively isn’t the complete solution as it constantly fluctuates, it can be a great start.
Tangible steps to leverage identity:
Align with values.
Highlight positive outcomes.
Provide opportunities for self-expression.
Empower through active OPTIMISM
Just like I said earlier, vivid imagery and experiences don’t have to be negative to inspire action. Positive storytelling can do the same thing.
While negativity is attention-grabbing and quick to make headlines, when it is used in excess, it can leave people feeling discouraged and paralyzed to change.
A positive outlook can motivate people to take action and persevere through challenges and optimism can help people bounce back from setbacks and maintain commitment to the desired behavior.
Optimism, confidence, and hope are key to maintaining motivation and momentum in the face of the inevitable setbacks and challenges that come with environmental conservation.
Tangible steps to empower through optimism:
Focus on progress.
Provide support and encouragement.
Address challenges proactively.
Judiciously use REWARDS
The "carrot and stick" is a metaphor that refers to the use of rewards and or punishments to encourage a desired behavior.
The term comes from the traditional practice of using a carrot to motivate a donkey to move forward, while also using a stick to whip it if it doesn't move.
Carrots symbolize rewards for doing good and sticks symbolize punishments for doing bad.
While we’ll go more in-depth on this concept in the enforcement and compliance side of things in the Policy Pillar, let’s touch on it a little here as well.
Just like with the two behavioral building blocks Easy and Habits, Rewards help make behaviors easier to start doing and harder to stop.
"We are more likely to engage in behaviors when we feel that the benefits outweigh the costs. By choosing incentives wisely, we can attract people to positive environmental behaviors and deter them from negative ones." - Making Shift Happen
While rewards can come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, they can all reinforce desired behaviors and increase the likelihood of repetition.
The key here is understanding your audience well enough, in the beginning, to cater rewards to each audience’s specific desires.
Tangible steps to use rewards:
Choose appropriate rewards.
Use rewards strategically.
Frame for appropriate ASSOCIATIONS
Framing is the process of creating certain connections and associations to shift the way people think about certain experiences or information
Let's look at two statements that tell virtually the same thing.
75% fat-free meat
25% fat meat
If those statements were labeled on your ground beef, which would you rather buy? 75% fat-free? Or 25% fat?
Most people would choose the 75% fat-free, even though it has the same exact amount of fat content as the 25% fat meat.
This is because those two labels are framed differently. One focuses on the fat content, and is thus associated as unhealthy, and the other is focused on the lack of fat, making it seem healthier.
When thinking about behavior change for environmental conservation, we have to keep in mind the importance of framing for appropriate associations.
Saying Driving cars is bad for the environment might be intended to get people to want to take more sustainable forms of transportation, but it is framed around cars, the very thing it is trying to avoid. Instead, saying Biking and using public transportation is good for the environment frames the situation on what you should be doing.
From a psychological perspective, creating neurological connections around what you want people to think about rather than what you don't want them to think about proves much more effective.
"Repeating anti-environmental frames, even to negate them, only serves to strengthen those frames."
Tangible steps to frame associations:
Connect with positive emotions.
Avoid negative associations.
Don't repeat the wrong message
Expanding the self to ensure nature’s LONGEVITY
The reason why I am passionate about conservation and why I am pursuing a career in the marine world, to begin with, is because the ocean is where I feel closest to God.
In other words, I am passionate about the conservation of the ocean because my sense of self and identity are linked to its preservation. In Genesis, God made man steward of the earth and I take that to heart.
If people can build a connection with nature (it does not have to be as spiritual as mine but a connection nonetheless,) it can provide a sense of purpose and meaning, motivating them to take action.
While extrinsic motivation through rewards can be effective and is oftentimes necessary, intrinsic rewards are always ideal.
For environmental conservation to stick long after the conservationist is gone, people have to truly care about the environment.
Bringing Steve Irwin’s quote up again: humans want to save things that they love.
Tangible steps to expand the self for nature’s longevity:
Foster a connection with nature.
Educate about environmental issues.
Empower individuals to take action.
In Conclusion
The BEHAVIORAL building blocks from Making Shift Happen are the fundamental elements used to create and shape our behaviors.
By understanding and applying these building blocks, we can create more effective interventions that promote positive behavior change and address the wide variety of pressing challenges that surround environmental conservation.
Commentaires