Behaviour change approaches are now being used to bring about environmental outcomes in many areas ranging from travel (e.g. TravelSmart projects in Australia), natural resources (e.g. in natural resources in New Zealand [Parminter 2006]), in energy (e.g. AMCOR in New South Wales (Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability 2006) and in water (e.g. Syme and Nancarrow, 2002, London Sustainability Exchange 2007).
There are two different types of behaviour change approaches: one which could be described as “top-down” and another which can be described as “bottom up” in the sense that people work through the process of change themselves.
Both of these approaches have been shown to be extremely useful and can be complementary.
Interestingly, the bottom-up approach is likely to have many benefits in addition to the change in behaviour that it was originally trying to influence.
Top-Down Behaviour Change - Social Marketing
The well-known social marketing approach is based on the notion that if marketing encourages people to buy products like Nike, it can also encourage people to adopt behaviours that will enhance their own and fellow-citizens’ lives.
Bottom-up: A community development based approach
Community development programs were originally designed to effect behaviour change in some critical area of social activity – health promotion, education, family function are some of the more familiar ones.
More recently they have been adapted to patterns of resource usage, as in voluntary travel behaviour change programs in travel and in the areas of reducing water, waste and energy use (e.g.Australian Greenhouse Office, 2002).
The community development approach can be characterised as an unstructured, evolving response by individuals or a community to their particular individual needs or problems.
The primary tools of a community development approach are listening and facilitating change rather than ‘telling’ and helping people to help themselves.
For travel behaviour change projects, the community development approach has been developed for use at the individual, as well as the community level (Ampt, 1999, 2003).
Using the principle of helping people to help themselves, the first step in any interchange is listening to see what problems or issues people may have and then working with them to find a solution.
This means that in many cases the problem they solve (e.g. losing weight by walking more), while possibly addressing the decision maker’s goal (e.g. to reduce congestion or emissions) may not be seen by the individual as having anything to do with that goal.
The approach has now been expanded to be reduce CO2 emissions from waste, energy and water in New Zealand and in Western Australia.
The core element of the community development approach is a conversation in which an individual is asked about the key issues that are bothering them about a given behaviour.
For example, in a voluntary behaviour change project, the conversation might begin by asking what frustrations the person has with getting around in the car or with using disposable nappies or with water use during restrictions.
The type of answers are sometimes directly related to the environmental problems that are caused.
More often they are not: “I’m always grumpy when I drive the kids around’, ‘disposable nappies make the bin fill up before the end of the week’, or ‘I am always fighting with my teenager about long showers’.
This then leads on to a facilitative process where the conversationalist works with the person to find a solution to their specific problem.
In almost all cases the solution results in less car kms, less waste or less water us (i.e. less CO2 emissions) – and happier people.
Our experience has shown that not only do people change their behaviour to reduce emissions as a result of this community development approach to voluntary behaviour change, but perhaps more importantly, by taking responsibility for change in one thing, they quite often work out changes in other areas.
© Sinclair Knight Merz
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Who does this affect?
Over the past eight years or so there have been a growing number of initiatives that use a voluntary behaviour change approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in travel, water, waste and energy. These initiatives could be described as the bottom-up (helping people to help themselves) and add value to the top down nature of demand management measures. This means that the approach is relevant to people in organisations who want to bring about or speed up change within their organisation or among their stakeholders or customers.
What do I need to do?
Understand the ways in which voluntary behaviour change can be used to effect a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Author: Liz Ampt
Liz Ampt is Director, Behaviour Change at SKM. An Adjunct Associate Professor with the Transport Systems Centre at the University of South Australia, Liz has written many papers in international journals and presented in Australia and overseas on behaviour change. She took out the 1999 World Technology Award for Transportation from
World Technology Network and The Economist for her contribution to travel behaviour change, and is a past Chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research.
© Sinclair Knight Merz
Requests to re-publish achieve articles should be made here