ABSTRACT
As a response to environmental problems, today’s focus on ‘behaviour change’ (attempting to motivate, in piecemeal fashion, uptake of particular pro-environmental behaviours while remaining oblivious to values that these approaches engage and strengthen) presents a dangerous distraction. This focus is dangerous because it leads to strategies that are likely to engage and strengthen values that are counterproductive to the emergence of stronger and more durable environmental (and wider social) concern. It is a distraction because it diverts attention and resources from the problem of building wider and more durable public demand for ambitious interventions.
This chapter situates the necessary response to environmental problems in a far broader context than that offered by a narrow focus on ‘behaviour change’. Vocal and sustained public demand for ambitious interventions from business and government will only emerge as a result of engaging – and, over time, strengthening – those values that underpin systemic concern about social and environmental problems, and which motivate action in line with this concern. These are ‘intrinsic’ values of community, concern for social justice, affiliation to friends and family, and connection to nature. Yet many behaviour change campaigns specifically seek to engage opposing extrinsic values (e.g., financial reward or social status) that are associated with lower social and environmental concern. Moreover, while many contemporary influences serve to erode the importance that citizens place on intrinsic values, few environmentally concerned organizations (whether NGOs, government agencies or progressive businesses) work to weaken or remove the sources of such influences.
