Background
Amidst declining biodiversity and rapid climate and land use changes, there is a clarion call for intensification and expansion of nature-based solutions (e.g. rewilding, land-sharing strategies) at scale. At the same time, there is increasing acknowledgement that pressure on nature is a behavioural challenge and therefore needs behaviourally-informed solutions. This section aims to advance students’ understanding of behavioural change interventions, through exploring underlying concepts, theories and principles of behavioural change in relation to nature conservation. In doing so, the section encourages reflection on key questions concerning the relevance of changing behaviours in the context of nature recovery and tools and/or strategies for achieving same across scale and sub-populations of people.
Festus Asaaga from UKCEH and Harry Bond Taylor from the University of Sheffield give a short overview of behaviour change models and their role in pollution control
Key Reading
Hagger, M.S., Cameron, L.D., Hamilton, K., Hankonen, N. and Lintunen, T. eds., 2020. The handbook of behavior change. Cambridge University Press. https://people.umass.edu/aizen/pubs/beh-change.pdf
Michie, S., Van Stralen, M.M. and West, R., 2011. The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation science, 6(1), p.42. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42.pdf
Skivington, K., Matthews, L., Simpson, S.A., Craig, P., Baird, J., Blazeby, J.M., Boyd, K.A., Craig, N., French, D.P., McIntosh, E. and Petticrew, M., 2021. A new framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions: update of Medical Research Council guidance. bmj, 374. https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2061
Supplementary resources:
Health belief model - https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/health-belief-model
I change model - https://www.heindevries.eu/interests/change
https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42
https://learningforsustainability.net/pubs/practicechange-intro.pdf
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10095640/1/WW04E6.pdf