Great question. To answer it, I need to take a step back.

People act in order to gain a positive outcome or to avoid a negative one. The most powerful outcomes in motivating or altering our behaviour are those who are immediate and certain. For example, we stop behaving a certain way when our behaviour brings about immediate negative outcomes.

That’s why most environment-destructive behaviour happens. The positive consequences are immediate and certain e.g. comfort, convenience, perceived efficiency while the negative consequences seem improbable and remote. What is more, behaving pro-environmentally is typically inconvenient, expensive, or uncomfortable, which are negative consequences that happen immediately and certainly.

All of the above goes against the adoption of pro-environmental behaviour, even if people acknowledge it should occur. That’s why instruction or information alone is insufficient; people are knowingly doing the wrong thing. On top of that, attitudes are difficult to identify, and even more difficult to change directly. Most of us don’t have the education, training, experience, nor time to do that.

So what could we do instead? We could design a motivational intervention where an incentive/reward program is used to alter a target behaviour directly. When you change people’s behaviour, you will indirectly improve their attitude, commitment and internal motivation.

So, look for external factors influencing a certain behaviour, e.g. equipment design, management systems, the behaviours shown by others, and various social dynamics and design a behavioural intervention.  We can motivate people to act a certain way by using external encouragement or pressure to change.

It’s critical, however, that you use positive over negative reinforcement. A reward approach is more likely to make people think their behaviour change is voluntary and stick with it. On the contrary, a disincentive or punishment might be perceived as a threat to one’s freedom and have the opposite result. Positive recognition of a certain behaviour not only increases the frequency of that behaviour but also increases the likelihood that other desirable behaviours will be adopted. So, recognizing people’s environmentally friendly behaviour will promote more learning and positive motivation than will criticizing their environmentally destructive behaviour. Finally, positive attitudes are more likely to follow an incentive/reward approach and when that attitude is linked to one’s behaviour change, the likelihood that this behaviour will become a norm increases.

To sum up:

Instead of an intervention whichthinks peopleinto acting differently, opt for a behaviour-based intervention which acts people into thinking differently.Only this way can both behaviour andattitude be improved at the same time.

1. Don’t try to change attitudes by sharing information
2. Try to change behaviour by identifying external factors that could improve it
3. Implement a reward, not punishment, program to motivate the desired behaviour

You might also find useful the handbook of environmental psychology which you can access here