Sustainable Behaviour in Practice: Context, process and power in pro-environmental behaviour change
Lead Research Organisation:
University of East Anglia
Department Name: Environmental Sciences
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Tom Hargreaves (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Gill Seyfang (author)
(2010)
Understanding the politics and practice of civil society and citizenship in the UK's energy transition
in Energy Transitions in an Interdependent World, University of Sussex
Hargreaves T
(2013)
Up, Down, round and round: Connecting Regimes and Practices in Innovation for Sustainability
in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Hargreaves T
(2010)
Making energy visible: A qualitative field study of how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors
in Energy Policy
Hargreaves T
(2011)
Practice-ing behaviour change: Applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change
in Journal of Consumer Culture
Hargreaves T
(2015)
Interacting for the Environment: Engaging Goffman in Pro-Environmental Action
in Society & Natural Resources
Hargreaves T
(2012)
Questioning the virtues of pro-environmental behaviour research: Towards a phronetic approach
in Geoforum
Nye M
(2010)
Exploring the Social Dynamics of Proenvironmental Behavior Change A Comparative Study of Intervention Processes at Home and Work
in Journal of Industrial Ecology
Tom Hargreaves (author)
(2010)
Understanding how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors : opening the black box of the household
in European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference
Tom Hargreaves
(2011)
Pro-environmental interaction: engaging Goffman on pro-environmental behaviour change
| Description | This project explored the application of social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) change based on an in-depth ethnographic study of a PEB change initiative in a workplace. It found that, contrary to the majority of existing academic research and policy designed to encourage PEB, pro-environmental acts are not usually or even often the result of processes of individual decision-making. As such, neither research nor policy should continue to focus on changing individuals' attitudes, values or beliefs in the hope that this will, in turn, encourage them to make pro-environmental decisions. Instead, the project found that PEB (or a lack of PEB) is the result of the dynamics and evolution of a range of social practices that individuals routinely perform. Policy and research attention designed to encourage PEB should therefore be focussed on everyday social practices, what they're made up of, and how they evolve and change over time. In attending to practices in these ways, this research also revealed the importance of understanding how social interaction plays a key role in shaping the ways in which practices are performed and in transmitting changes in practices from one practitioner to another. The work of Erving Goffman is helpful in understanding these processes. Further attention should also be paid to how power operates in and through social practices. Here Michel Foucault's work on discipline and governmentality is of vital importance.Together, these key findings reveal not only why PEB has been so difficult to achieve, but they also provide a number of potential footholds and routes that future attempts to encourage PEB might make use of. |
| Exploitation Route | For policy-makers, this research is of value in helping to design and evaluate pro-environmental behaviour change initiatives. More broadly, the core principles of the research are of value for any policy efforts to encourage behaviour change e.g. in the areas of obesity, driving, anti-smoking etc. Specifically, the research suggests that the focus of behaviour change initiatives needs to move on from individuals, their attitudes, values and decision-making process, and should instead concentrate on understanding and seeking to influence the evolution of social practices. For businesses, as well as offering ways of improving behaviour change initiatives, the research also provides an extremely detailed real-life case study of how pro-enviromental behaviour change initiatives unfold in workplaces. For NGOs and community groups, the research provides key insights into how behaviour change happens (or doesn't) and can therefore help to design and improve attempts to change people's behaviour. For other researchers, the key findings of this project are of importance because they provide one of the first attempts to empirically apply social practice theory to the study of pro-environmental behaviour change. They thus provide means by which other researchers can theorise and empirically explore practices, ways in which they can understand how practices evolve and change in response to deliberate interventions, and - through their focus on social interaction and power - they provide key points of focus that other researchers should attend to. Beyond academia, this research can be put to use by policy-makers (at national and local levels), businesses and NGOs in order to understand how and why pro-environmental behaviour change interventions operate (and how and why they typically fail to achieve significant and lasting results). The research can thus inform and improve the design of pro-environmental behaviour change interventions. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Energy,Environment |
| Description | The findings from this fellowship have been used to inform the design and evaluation of behaviour change initiatives conducted by organisations such as Global Action Plan and also in several local authorities. Further, work that emerged as a direct result of this fellowship and that focussed on household responses to energy feedback has informed (and been cited in) government consultations on the smart meter roll-out and has been used to inform the design and installation of in-home display monitors. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2009 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Energy,Environment |
| Impact Types | Societal |
| Description | Evaluating Green Champions |
| Amount | £10,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | The Leadership Foundation for Higher Eductaion |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2010 |
| End | 06/2012 |
| Description | Governmentality and energy use : behaviour change and the making up of energy citizens |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presented at a seminar entitled 'Participation, power and sustainable energy futures', held at the University of Sussex. This was one of a series of five seminars in the ESRC seminar series on critical public engagement. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| URL | http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/esrcsems/sems/Hargreaves |
| Description | Making Pro-Environmental Behaviour Work |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | A seminar exploring the application of social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | The social and behavioural aspects of energy |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at UKERC summer school, University of Warwick. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2010 |
| URL | http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/1001%20Summer%20School |
| Description | Understanding how householders interact with feedback from smart energy monitors : opening the black box of the household |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presentation given at a seminar entitled 'Energy subjects : cultural economies of energy consumption'. This was part of the ESRC seminar series on geographies of energy transition, and was held at the University of Manchester. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |