ABSTRACT
Sustainability and pro-environmental behaviour are now the largest and most active areas of research in environmental psychology. People’s behaviour is one of the main drivers of climate change and other forms or environmental degradation. Environmental psychology therefore has, potentially, a significant role to play in achieving sustainability. The chapter examines the prioritization of interventions and classification of pro-environmental behaviours, including curtailment, efficiency and maintenance. Three of the primary theories applied to pro-environmental behaviour are described and discussed: Value-Belief-Norm theory, goal-framing theory, and the theory of planned behaviour. The validity and usefulness of the theories are discussed. Throughout the chapter the effectiveness of different intervention strategies is considered. The use of financial and disincentives, norms, information, feedback and other practical approaches to interventions are considered. The role of habit and how it might be changed are also discussed. Although the research findings are varied, and sometimes contradictory, overall, they present a reasonably coherent picture of the factors that underlie behaviour and how those behaviours might be changed. The chapter also warns against seeing the issues as being purely a result of behaviour and points to the importance of also examining structural factors within which that behaviour is embedded.
