Is 'Doing Your Bit' Enough?

This discussion document from Richard Docwra questions whether the strategy commonly used to seek behavioural change on environmental issues - asking people to make a few small changes to their lives - is flawed. He poses the question based on what he sees as weaknesses within this behaviour change approach and then suggests changes to increase the effectiveness of the strategy.

The weaknesses he discusses about the "small steps" strategy are the following:

1. "It is not directed at meeting specific goals - if we only have a short period of time in which to achieve a reasonably specific goal (or goals) and there are dreadful consequences of not meeting this goal, should our aim not be to achieve this goal, and to accept nothing less than this?
2. Its goals are unclear - most organisations seeking behaviour change currently don't provide a clear idea of the lifestyles we will each need to adopt to reach our climate change goals (and the equally urgent and more complex goal of living within the parameters of one planet), as well as the series of changes they will be asking members of the public to make over the coming years to achieve these goals. It is critical to provide this vision as it will be our roadmap to a sustainable future and to achieving our goals.
3. Currently, very few materials seeking behaviour change from the public are effective at communicating the relative impact that different lifestyle changes will have. This means that people are unable to prioritise their actions or select the changes that will have most impact.
4. Asking for 'small steps' without context might not be the most effective method of seeking behaviour change from individuals." - Here Dowcra counters the argument that the future vision may be too depressing or too complicated to engage people. "Skilled communicators should be able to ensure that the latter problem does not occur, and the former problem can be overcome by challenging people's views as to what a 'good life' consists of, away from the consumerist philosophy that evidence suggests is failing to make people any happier and towards a world in which people pursue and enjoy true quality of life." Otherwise, he suggests that there is a risk of "demotivation" as further conservationist steps are added to changes already requested.

In the conclusion of this document, Docwra suggests that "the environmental cause should focus its programmes of public behaviour change specifically on meeting its urgent goals within the necessary timeframes. Secondly, it should invest more time in setting out the strategy required to meet these goals and the vision of the future it entails...." Finally, he advocates for strengthening the approach to seeking small behaviour changes by adding information about the relative impact of small changes and by making these steps part of a long-term strategy, which aims to achieve specific environmental goals within a specific period of time. This strategy would include a clear long-term vision of what an individual's life will look like if the changes are successful.