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• 1 2017-10-13T19:20:29+00:00 Barriers in Environmental Communications 18 COMM_Section_5 plain 2017-12-04T18:46:51+00:00 To be most effective in environmental communications, it is important to understand what factors prevent individuals from receiving and responding to environmental messages in the way the communicator intends. These factors are called psycho-social barriers. We explore this concept using the example of climate change, since climate change represents the single greatest environmental threat to life on this planet; and yet communicators have often struggled to successfully relay this reality to the public, and to motivate them to engage in effective climate change mitigation and adaptation (i.e., pro-environmental) behaviours.

  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.
  There are several ways in which these barriers can be conceptualized; different barrier lists exist depending on factors such as the academic discipline you are looking at it from. The list presented here was chosen because many of the barriers have been validated through empirical research, and are well grounded in psychology theory. Professor Robert Gifford from the University of Victoria has been a pioneer in this area.
  
  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.

  The Social Animal

  The reading from Vasseur and Pickering (2015), Feeding the Social Animal: How to Engage Canadians in Climate Change Mitigation, discusses some of the barriers to change introduced above within the evolving Canadian context, and offers some insights into how things might change for the better. Improved, smarter communications are certainly an essential part of the solution.

  The Attitude-Behaviour Gap

  A big concern facing organizations that promote environmentally-friendly consumer behaviour is the Attitude-Behaviour Gap (A-B). Most consumers, when asked, will hold very positive attitudes about supporting environmentally-friendly companies, buying environmentally-friendly products or even paying extra for products and services that are more ‘green’ compared to their competitors. However, when it comes down to actual purchases, a lot of green products and services are not supported by consumers. The reasons for the A-B gap are plentiful including a concern that environmentally-friendly products are not as effective and suffer from perceptions of poor quality. Consumers also do not want to pay more money for environmentally-friendly products in many instances. Researchers and organizations will need to collaborate to determine how to close this gap for the good of the planet.