Here I am, now a graduate student in Bloomington, Indiana. I
can no longer call myself a temporary Tica or a mountain-dwelling educator. I
created this blog in 2011 during my tenure as an intern at UGA’s Costa Rica
campus. I wanted to catalog my adventures, photos, random thoughts, etc. This
proved easy enough while I was away, and when I returned to the United States I
thought something like, “Hey, I should keep this up! It’s a productive means
for reflection, I can go back and read it later, PLUS my friends and family can
all learn more about me.”
Months passed. Then over a year…still no blog entries. As
you can see below, I posted one measly update near the start of my time working
at the Len Foote Hike Inn (a very neat sustainable community in it’s own
right). My intention was obviously to continue blogging. Unfortunately, it seems Augusten Burroughs and I have something in common:
Why exactly is it, though, that my good intentions fail me every time I think about what a great blog entry my last trip would make? Or every time I jump in for a planned 5-minute shower, only to emerge 10-15 minutes later? Or when I walk into Target and fall hopelessly for yet another pair of shoes that I vowed I wouldn't buy?
I have a sneaky suspicion these misalignments between my
intentions and my actions have little to do with economic burden or gaps in my
knowledge. Perhaps instead of focusing on these often-presumed causes of poor
behavior, identifying the benefits and barriers of all these different actions and
making a plan accordingly could help me act more in line with my intentions?
Dr. McKenzie-Mohr certainly thinks so. Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) is
his framework for shifting behaviors toward sustainability, though it can be
applied much more broadly. CBSM is a process by which individuals and communities
can:
- Identify behaviors they’d like to change
- Explore the various barriers and benefits to these and other related behaviors and
- Strategically target behavior change using social cues, commitments, reminders, incentives and more
The complete framework also includes a very important pilot phase
when strategies are tested on a small-scale before full implementation.
This stuff is INSANELY interesting to me. As an undergrad at
UGA leading a club called Students for Environmental Action, I was getting so frustrated
that no matter how many film screenings we hosted, informative signs we hung, or hours we spent tabling about the issues, people just weren't jumping on board
for our cause! If this frustration sounds familiar, then you might love
learning more about behavioral psychology too. It's the subject that CBSM
hinges on, as does the fascinating book Nudge, and Dr. Attari's V550 class
called “Human Behavior and Energy Consumption.”
From my perspective, no amount of effective policy could
equal the Earth-shattering (or rather, Earth-saving) potential of a strong social
movement. That is, individuals making voluntary decisions to act differently. What
do you think? My impression, supported by Roseland page 34, is that sustainable
communities are built from the ground up. Individual behavior changes will be
integral to the survival of our planet. Accordingly, I’ll look forward to the
next wave of V515 blog entries where we will begin sharing our personal project
goals for the semester. Mine? I’ll be rethinking my purchasing habits, so it
seems this isn't the last you’ll hear about my battle with the shoe section at
Target. We are all doing what we can, when we can...but let’s see if we can get
a little help along the way from community-based social marketing J
You could also check out the "theory of planned behavior" and how it tackles the problem of perceived and actual constraints to particular behaviors.
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ReplyDeleteI deleted that comment because it had too many typos - proofread, kids! Here is a literate version:
DeleteI really like this comment because as an undergrad I majored in Psychology and my favorite class was about social psychology. To answer your question about effective policy versus social movement - I think it comes down to peer pressure leading to cultural shifts. We talked about today how Germany requires citizens to recycle and how it has become an integral part of their culture and identity as Germans. I think both social movements and policy changes could lead to social pressure, which has a real chance to impact behaviors.
Also I wonder about social movements being instigators to effective policy. I think about the civil rights movement and how citizens changed enough opinions about segregation, that eventually policies were set into place that forced integration of public and private institutions. So maybe it's not a question of which instrument is better, but how they work together to affect change.
Changing the actions of society starts within all of us, right? I think you hit on a really important topic about even our own individual actions (despite the best intentions) can go against what we preach, read, research, commit to, etc. I was thinking it might take an extreme situation for the world to shift (i.e. we literally run out of a resource).
ReplyDeleteI also like what Laura has to say about how different instruments can work together to affect change. Remember what Molly talked about in class? There were 3 or 4 environmental and sustainable organizations in Bloomington, for Bloomington. Why not work together? I respect that each will likely have it's own 'Golden Objective' but I think I could get on board with helping out something in the name of sustainable practices that wasn't "my project" for a few months, knowing that others will help out with my project in the next set of few months... Does that make sense?
Too bad we can't fix everything in a "few months." But that doesn't need to stop us from trying!
I’m all for individual behavior change, but do we have the time to keep trying to convince people about the effects of climate change, environmental degradation, etc. before it becomes too late? I doubt it. Like we saw last week, Bill Mckibben was writing about climate change in the 1980’s, and while awareness has increased since then, no discernable difference in carbon emissions has resulted from individuals choosing to change their behavior. In fact the only discernable reduction in carbon emissions in the United States were a consequence of the 2008 financial crisis and a switch from coal to natural gas because fracking has caused NG prices to plummet. Neither of these things were good (in my opinion), but to me it shows that top down policy is the only avenue to achieve reductions in carbon emissions that actually make a difference. Perhaps we need individual action to start a social movement that pushes those in power to take policy action (or a social movement that disposes those in power, but that’s a different story), but I have no hope for individual action alone. I am a strong proponent of individual action surrounding sustainability and climate change, but really for the reason that it improves quality of life in many ways other than actually reducing the impacts from climate change.
ReplyDeleteme gusta your post--really interesting. leading off of the comment about the german political and social identity that has been created around mandatory recycling, i wonder how can we get americans to accept sustainability when as a society we are typically very defiant and individualistic (something that is hard to recognize until you leave the country). it's a challenge but completely necessary for our future. and does target really have great shoes? i need to check up on it
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