Barriers in Environmental Communications
Psycho-social Barriers to Change
Several psychological barriers can prevent us as individuals from fully engaging in behaviours that help the environment. Such behaviour can range from participating in recycling programs and making ‘greener’ purchase decisions as consumers, through to supporting environmental activism organizations. Understanding these obstacles is important for environmental communicators and policy makers in designing messaging and programs that are most likely to be effective in promoting impactful and sustained pro-environmental behaviour from the public.Here is a summary of some of the most important psychological barriers as they relate to climate change mitigation and adaptation, although many of the principles apply equally to other environmental issues and activities:
1. Other People
- Social comparison & norms: We compare our actions against others to decide on what the ‘correct’ response to climate change should be.
- Perceived inequity: “___ are not changing their behaviour, so why should I?”
- Psychosocial risk: We may be criticized or rebuked by others if we engage in mitigation behaviour, and this might damage our self-esteem.
2. Ideologies
- Salvation through technology (aka ‘techno-salvation’): Excessive trust that technology will solve the problems associated with climate change prevents us from acting ourselves.
3. Limited reasoning
- Ignorance: Not being aware of climate change impacts or not knowing what actions we can take to mitigate/adapt.
- Uncertainty and skepticism: Doubt or denial regarding the existence of climate change, its anthropogenic causes, or the contribution of our own actions.
- Spatial discounting: When impacts are presumed to be worse elsewhere, we are less motivated to act on our local environments.
- Perceived powerlessness: We are less likely to act when we believe our actions will make no difference.
4. Limited Behaviour
- Doing the bare minimum: We make easy, but low-impact changes in our behaviour while avoiding higher-cost but more effective actions.
- The rebound effect: “Now I have this fuel-efficient car, I can drive further” may cancel out the mitigation benefits of having changed from the less fuel-efficient car.
5. Investments
- Sunk costs: “Why would I take public transit, now that I’ve spent all this money on a car?”
- Conflicting values, goals, and aspirations: Climate change is not high on the list of priorities in our lives, and may be incompatible with some goals (e.g. wealth generation).
- Lack of place attachment: We are more likely to look after a place we feel attached to than one we do not.
It’s important to realize that many of these psychological obstacles operate at the sub-conscious level, adding to the challenge of creating effective communication for pro-environmental behaviour change.