A Study of Barriers to Pro-Environmental Behaviour

One prominent research direction has focused on the so-called “barriers to action against Climate Change”. Many different barriers have been identified in the literature with differing levels of importance depending on the context of each study (time and place) although some barriers cut across cultures. Barriers can be psychological, socio-cultural and structural (political and economic) (Gifford, 2011, 199-212). These categories are not very clear cut as often as different categories can become intermixed in ways that makes it hard to disentangle them. For example, psychological (e.g.

political ideology) and structural (e.g. media coverage) barriers often interact with each other in ways that makes it hard to determine which barriers are the most significant ones.

In some cases, the reasons for this behavioural deficit are structural and therefore beyond an individual’s reasonable control. For example, low income severely limits one’s ability to purchase solar panels, living in a rural area usually means public transport does not exist as an alternative to driving, and living in a region with cold winters restricts one’s ability to reduce home-heating-based energy use. However, for almost everyone who is not severely restricted by structural barriers, adopting more pro-environmental choices and behaviour is possible, but this adoption is not occurring to the extent necessary to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental damage. Thus, the question remains: What limits more widespread mitigation, adaptation and sustainability actions on the part of individuals for whom such actions are feasible?

Professor Dr. Robert Gifford is a professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. As an environmental

psychologist who has spent over 30 years researching and writing about human behaviour in this context, he has developed an ever-growing list of the reasons people don’t always behave in pro-environmental ways, and has categorised them loosely into seven “Dragons of Inaction”. They are as below according to (Gifford, 2011, 199-212):

i. Limited Cognitions

The first one is the limitation that results from how we think about things. There’s ignorance (not knowing enough about environmental problems, or which solutions to take), uncertainty resulting in postponed action (“is Climate Change really a serious and urgent problem, or is there something in what the sceptics are saying?”), optimism bias (“tendency to think that environmental problems couldn’t really be that bad, or that surely someone will come up with a silver bullet solution just in time”), and temporal and spatial discounting, when people presume environmental problems are going to be worse in the future and in other parts of the planet, and so are less likely to be motivated to take action now.

ii. Other People

According to (Gifford, 2011, 199-212)⁹ the next barrier is “Other People”. Whilst we might think the media has a huge impact on our behaviour, it’s actually other people who have the greatest impact. People routinely look to others’ behaviour in choosing their own actions. Since we have a tendency to compare ourselves, and to alter our behaviour to fit the norm, other people can also inspire us to adopt more climate-friendly behaviour when we observe them taking action. The more we see being green as

“normal’”, the more we want to be green, too. Colleagues who cycle to work and meet

by videoconference, friends who grow their own food and take bike holidays, neighbours who have solar panels or water tanks, family members who purchase ethical investments, children who walk or ride to school, community leaders who use public transport – all encourage us to see pro-environmental behaviour as normal and desirable.

iii. Perceived Risks

The third dragon (Gifford, 2011, 199-212) describes is “Perceived Risks”. People are usually risk-averse, and a person may feel threatened by many different types of risks. So for example, if you are considering to purchasing an electric car, you would weigh up financial costs, physical risks (will it be safe?), social costs (what will people think of me?), time (will I be taking a lot longer to get to places?), functional risks (will it fit the whole family as well as our luggage?), and even psychological costs.

iv. Sunk Costs

The next type of psychological barrier is “Sunk Costs”. These are the prior investments we have made, that we often find difficult to give up. They could be well established habits, like long hot showers, that are hard to forgo. They could be significant financial investments, like a luxury car that’s sitting in the garage and because it’s there it seems a shame not to use it. But perhaps the most compelling sunk cost, and the one that trips us up most, is that of conflicting goals and aspirations – the important things in our life that we’ve invested so much meaning in.

v. Ideology

Next, Gifford (2011, 199-212) describes barriers to change that arise from having a particular “Ideology” or way of thinking about the world, which can limit our preparedness to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. We may defend our specific worldview or way of living because it’s comfortable and we resist change. Our beliefs in

particular ideologies like ‘techno-salvation’, or supra-human powers like ‘mother nature’

or God, may convince us that we are protected from ultimate climate disaster, thus minimising the need to change our own behaviour.

vi. Discredence

“Discredence” was the next sub-set of dragons, which explained a general sense of unbelieving. Here he included things like denial, mistrust (of science, of politicians, of the adequacy of a new climate-friendly project etc.) and reactance (“you can’t make me do it”).

vii. Limited Behaviour

Gifford (2011, 199-212) described barriers that come from “Limited Behaviour” – the idea that we limit the effectiveness of our behaviour in a variety of curious ways. We might choose less effective pro-environmental actions because they are easier or cheaper to change, or more noticeable, but the gains we make in reducing carbon emissions might be negligible. These efforts then become tokenistic, and create further problems if we think we’ve done our bit for the environment, and are now off the responsibility for any further action. Another example of limited behaviour is the rebound effect, where it is commonly found that after making some savings in emissions in one area, we often erase the gains by using the savings to treat ourselves on an even higher carbon emitting product or activity.

Finally, he concludes that, “As in other behaviour domains that were strongly resistant to behaviour change, such as smoking and the use of safety belts, the dragons of inaction can be overcome, although the effort will take time and will never be

infrastructure, the development of norms, the setting of reasonable goals, in-your-face feedback, the spreading of social norms through social networks, and appropriate personal rewards, it will be done. These steps must be taken expeditiously; we may not have the four or five decades that it has taken to get most people to stop smoking and wear a safety belts to ease our profligate spewing of greenhouse gases, to manage the blow it will already have caused, and prevent even stronger blows”¹⁰.