Four Steps to Growing Behavior Change
To maximize the ability of your program to change behavior, we recommended following a four step process, as demonstrated through the example of a recycling education program. 1) Goals: Identify which behaviors you want to change. The Emerald Forest Alliance (EFA) would like to initiate a new recycling education program for schools, providing in-class presentations about local recycling facilities. They hold a meeting to determine that the primary goal of the program is to increase student and teacher participation in recycling.
2) Audience: Ask your audience what barriers they face to changing their behavior. To determine which behavior change strategies to apply, the EFA surveys local students and teachers to identify why they are not currently recycling. The surveys reveal a number of reasons why students do not recycle in schools. Students do not know which items are recyclable or where to recycle them. In addition, most students have never seen their friends recycle. The surveys also reveal that most teachers do not believe that their small actions of recycling make a big enough difference to be worth the effort.
3) Strategies: Apply strategies that address the barriers your audience faces. While there are several surface level barriers that seem to be at play with the students (knowing where and how to recycle), the EFA learned from the survey that there were deeper issues as well (lack of social norms for students and self-efficacy for teachers). Thus, instead of implementing a one-time classroom program which would not address the deeper issues and therefore may not be successful in generating long-term behavior change, EFA alters the program design to focus on a few specific schools. With these schools, they can focus more resources on addressing all variables of behavior change. EFA develops a program that has students work in groups to learn how to recycle in their school, thereby promoting a positive social atmosphere for recycling through the use of feedback, exploration, and a positive learning environment. In addition, EFA helps teachers work with the school maintenance staff to measure the amount of materials their classrooms recycle, thus providing feedback to teachers and students on their performance.
4) Evaluation: Determine whether your program changed behavior and how it can be improved. After conducting an evaluation of their program, EFA learns that recycling behavior increased for teachers and students! However, teachers from one school commented that their recycling bins were overflowing and becoming a problem for maintenance staff. To address this, EFA volunteers to provide larger recycling bins that can hold more recyclables.
Catherine Game, Andrea Liberatore and Ericka Pop- ovich are recent Master’s graduates of the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment in Ann Arbor. Dr. Michaela Zint is the students’ faculty advisor. The authors would like to thank Dr. Ray De Young, and fellow students Annie Gregory, Katherine Hollins, Alison Richardson, and Amanda Stone for their contributions.
References
Ajzen, I. & M. Fishbein (1980). A theory of reasoned action. (Chapter 1, Pp. 5-9). Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior. NJ: Prentice- Hall.
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 50: 179-211.
De Young, R. & M. C. Monroe, (1996). Some fundamentals of engaging stories. Environmental Education Research. 2: 171-187.
Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology. 2: 300-319.
Heimlich, J.E., & Ardoin, N.M. (2008). Understanding Behavior to Understand Behavior Change: A Literature Review. Environmental Education Research. 14(3): 215-237.
Hines, J. M., H. R. Hungerford and A. N. Tomera (1987). Analysis and syn- thesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental Education. 18(2): 1-8.
Hungerford, H.R. & Volk, T.L. (1990). Changing learner behavior through environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education. 12(3): 8-21.
Kaplan, S. & Kaplan, R. (2003). Health, supportive environments, and the Reasonable Person Model. American Journal of Public Health. 93: 1484-1489.
Kaplan, Stephen. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: toward an integra- tive framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 15: 169-182.
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Kaplan, S. (1991). Beyond rationality: Clarity-based decision making. (Pp. 171-190). In T. Gärling and G. W. Evans [Eds.] Environment, Cognition, and Action. NY: Oxford University Press.
McGregor, I. & B. Little (1998). Personal projects, happiness, and meaning: On doing well and being yourself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 74(2): 494-512.
Monroe, M. C. & S. Kaplan (1988). When words speak louder than actions: Environmental problem solving in the classroom. Journal of Environmental Education. 19(3): 38-41.
Stern, P.C., Dietz, T., Abel, T, Guagnano, G.A. and Kalof, L. A Value-Belief- Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism (1999).
Tbilisi Declaration. (1978). In Toward an action plan: A report on the Tbilisi Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
Zint, M. Forthcoming. Evaluating environmental education programs: Insights from a review of behavioral outcome evaluations. International Handbook of Research in Environmental Education, American Education Research Association.
Notes
1 Tbilisi Declaration. (1978). In Toward an action plan: A report on the Tbilisi Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
2 Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 50: 179-211.
3 Kaplan, Stephen. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: toward an inte- grative framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 15: 169-182.
4 Kaplan, S. & Kaplan, R. (2003). Health, supportive environments, and the Reasonable Person Model. American Journal of Public Health. 93: 1484-1489.
5 Sisson, G.R. (2001). Hands-on training: A simple and effective method for on-the-job training. San Francisco: Berrett-Kowhler.
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