Henk Staats

Effecting Durable Change A Team Approach to Improve Environmental Behavior in the Household

Interventions for voluntary proenvironmental behavior change usually target a limited number of behaviors and have difficulties in achieving durable change. The EcoTeam Program (ETP) is an intervention package that aims to overcome these flaws. Through a combination of information, feedback, and social interaction in a group—the EcoTeam—participants focus on the environmental consequences of their household behavior. The 3-year longitudinal study found that ETP participants (N= 150) changed half of the 38 household behaviors examined, with corresponding reductions on four physical measures of resource use. These improvements were maintained or enlarged 2 years after completion of the ETP, amounting to savings from 7% on water consumption to 32% on solid waste deposition. A detailed analysis of one behavior, means of transportation, suggests that change can be predicted from the interplay between behavioral intention and habitual performance before participation, and the degree of social influence experienced in the EcoTeam during participation.

Where to recover from attentional fatigue: An expectancy-value analysis of environmental preference

Abstract Preferences for natural and urban environments can be framed in terms of (1) beliefs about the likelihood of psychological restoration during a walk in each type of environment and (2) the evaluation of restoration given differing restoration needs. We conducted an experiment to test hypotheses about restoration as a basis for environmental preferences. Imagining themselves as attentionally fatigued or fully refreshed, participants (N=101) evaluated recovery, reflection, and social stimulation outcomes. Next, they viewed slides simulating a walk through a forest or an urban center, then rated the likelihood of recovery, reflection, and social stimulation outcomes following such a walk. This procedure was repeated with the second environment. Preference for the forest over the city was twice as strong given attentional fatigue. The greater likelihood of restoration in the natural environment in conjunction with more positive evaluation of recovery when fatigued appears to explain this pattern. The results have implications for environmental preference conceptualizations and our understanding of the relationship between preference and restoration.

Situational and personality factors as direct or personal norm mediated predictors of pro-environmental behavior: Questions derived from norm-activation theory.

Studies that use the norm activation theory (Schwartz, 1977) to explain pro-environmental behavior often focus on personal norms and on two situational activators, i.e., awareness of need and situational responsibility (e.g., Vining & Ebreo, 1992). The theorys other situational activators, efficacy and ability, and its personality trait activators, awareness of consequences and denial of responsibility, are generally ignored. The current article reports on two studies - a mail survey among the general public (N = 345) and a laboratory experiment among university freshmen (N = 166)–that found that (1) inclusion of additional activators improved the norm activation theorys potential to explain pro-environmental behavior and (2) personal norms significantly mediated the impact of activators on pro-environmental behavior. Theoretical issues and issues concerning environmental management evoked by these results are discussed.

Guest Editors’ introduction: Restorative environments

Restoration involves renewing diminished functional resources and capabilities. As with the term ‘‘psychological stress,’’ the term ‘‘restoration’’ can serve as a rubric that covers multiple processes (cf. Evans & Cohen, 1987). The processes of interest here share a common feature: they follow on efforts to address ordinary adaptational demands. Such efforts establish some potential for restoration. For example, mood may darken, autonomic arousal may rise, and the ability to direct attention may diminish. We can then observe restoration in positive shifts in mood, decline in arousal, improved performance on tasks that require directed attention, or other changes. It stands to reason that just which restorative process(es) we can observe will depend on the resources that the person drew on in the effort to meet demands. Research concerned with restoration per se has largely focused on psychophysiological stress recovery. Although the restoration rubric covers more than psychophysiological changes, the studies of stress recovery offer us some lessons about restoration in general. Consider this: when individuals show similar physiological reactions to laboratory stressors but then differ in the speed and completeness of their recovery, their data warn us that some characteristics of individuals and/or stressors may have little relevance for stress reactions but major import for stress recovery (e.g. Linden, Earle, Gerin, & Christenfeld, 1997). Such information might help us to better explain associations between stressors and long-term health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, and to identify individuals who are at higher risk for such outcomes (e.g. Haynes, Gannon, Orimoto, O’Brien, & Brandt, 1991). Speaking in general terms, then, studies of restoration can provide additional insights on the interplay of adaptational demands, individual characteristics, health, and wellbeing (cf. Frankenhaeuser & Johansson, 1986; Westman & Eden, 1997). Yet how restoration proceeds owes not only to the characteristics of the demands faced and the individual who faced them, but also to the sociophysical and temporal characteristics of the environment subsequently available for restoration. If our goal is to prevent disease and promote health and well-being, then we also stand to gain from an account of environmental characteristics that promote restoration. True, we can expect betweenand within-individual (across time) variation in experiences of environments available for restoration, much as we see such variation in appraisals of adaptational demands and reactions to them. Still, we can expect to find commonalities in the person– environments transactions that support restoration, just as researchers have identified commonalities in person– environment transactions that engender stress (Evans & Cohen, 1987). The study of restorative environments thus complements research on the conditions in which our functional resources and capabilities diminish. This complementarity has theoretical and practical aspects. As we have just indicated, the theoretical aspect involves specifying those qualities of person–environment transactions that promote restoration. Precedents in this effort include work by Berlyne (1960), Driver and Knopf (1976), Kaplan and Kaplan (1989; Kaplan and Talbot, 1983), and Ulrich (1983). Further work can reinforce the understanding that an absence of demands alone, were that possible, would not necessarily make for an optimal restorative environment. In practical terms, then, eliminating physical, social and temporal conditions that impose unwanted demands does not necessarily leave us with a restorative environment. Following the lead of professionals such as Frederick Law Olmsted (1870), planners, landscape architects, land managers, public health workers, politicians and others can aim to modify, maintain, and regulate environments so that they not only present fewer unwanted demands—less noise, less crowding, less air pollution, fewer scheduling constraints, and so forth— but also have physical, social, and temporal characteristics that promote restoration (see e.g. Kaplan, Kaplan, & Ryan, 1998). 1 For purposes of this brief introduction we have provided only a simple sketch of restoration. Intriguing complexities arise in defining ‘‘functional resources and capabilities,’’ enumerating the consequences of their depletion, disentangling the processes through which they diminish and subsequently become renewed, and determining when they are restored. We can also raise questions related to broad conceptions of restoration (e.g., how should we treat positive change following from stimulation underload?) and how guiding metaphors— the battery in need of recharging, for example—can both help and hinder research in this area. Despite the many interesting aspects of restoration that go unaddressed here, we trust that readers will not find our treatment too simplistic to be useful.

Commitment and Behavior Change A Meta-Analysis and Critical Review of Commitment-Making Strategies in Environmental Research

Commitment making is commonly regarded as an effective way to promote proenvironmental behaviors. The general idea is that when people commit to a certain behavior, they adhere to their commitment, and this produces long-term behavior change. Although this idea seems promising, the results are mixed. In the current article, the authors investigate whether and why commitment is effective. To do so, the authors first present a meta-analysis of environmental studies containing a commitment manipulation. Then, the authors investigate the psychological constructs that possibly underlie the commitment effect. They conclude that commitment making indeed leads to behavior change in the short- and long term, especially when compared with control conditions. However, a better understanding is needed of the possible underlying mechanisms that guide the commitment effect. The authors see commitment making as a potentially useful technique that could be improved by following up on findings from fundamental research. They provide suggestions for future research and recommendations for improving the effectiveness of commitment-making techniques.

Models of preference for outdoor scenes, Some experimental evidence

Predictions derived from three models of the relations between cognitive processing of and preference responses to outdoor scenes were examined. Twelve scene types were identified, ranging from the inner city to large-scale natural environments found in the Sydney region of Australia, the Padua region of northern Italy, and the Netherlands. In two experiments, participants from the three locations made preference, familiarity, and typicality judgments of all examples of each scene type, with the participants from Sydney and Padua making judgments of the stimuli from both locations while the Dutch participants judged the stimuli froll all three locations. The results of the experiments were most consistent with a preference-for-differences model, with only limited evidence for a preference-for-prototypes model. The largest effect on preference was related to scene type, an effect that is difficult to explain using either of the models of preference. It is argued that this presents a significant problem if it is accepted that preference is considered an important aspect of environmental experience.

Preference for Restorative Situations: Interactive Effects of Attentional State, Activity-in-Environment, and Social Context

This study extends research on psychological restoration by encompassing a broad set of restorative situations available to urban residents. Preferences are assessed for mundane restorative situations comprising leisure activity, setting, and social context, given different levels of attentional fatigue. Attentional fatigue, activity-setting, and social context were experimentally manipulated. The settings for activities were home, park, city center, and transit. Participants (N = 70) read scenarios describing an attentional state and rated their preference for the situations. Results show interactive effects of attentional state with activity-setting and with social context. The park was most preferred given attentional fatigue. Results confirm that while residents may particularly value urban nature for restoration, their urban context also provides other mundane but attractive restorative situations.

Improving Environmental Behavior in Companies: The Effectiveness of Tailored Versus Nontailored Interventions

Workshop managers in garages (N = 153) received a message by mail with recommendations on how their subordinates should behave to reduce oil pollution of wastewater. The recommendations were either tailored or not tailored to the current behavior routines in each specific workshop. Tailored messages resulted in more accurate knowledge (assessed 1 week postintervention) and in more pro-environmental behavior (assessed 3 months postintervention and compared to pretest data). Tailored messages were as effective with or without additional information on behavior routines in other garages. Compared to no message (control group, n = 60), the tailored messages resulted in more pro-environmental behavior. The nontailored messages were hardly more effective than no message. The nontailored messages remained as ineffective when readers were helped (via a routing procedure) to select those parts of the message relevant to their workshop. It is concluded that tailoring is a promising new approach when campaigning for pro-environmental behavior in organizations.

Urban Options for Psychological Restoration: Common Strategies in Everyday Situations

Objectives Given the need for knowledge on the restorative potential of urban settings, we sought to estimate the effects of personal and contextual factors on preferences and restoration likelihood assessments for different urban activities-in-environments. We also sought to study the generality of these effects across different countries. Methods We conducted a true experiment with convenience samples of university students in the Netherlands (n = 80), Sweden (n = 100), and the USA (n = 316). In each country, the experiment had a mixed design with activities-in-environments (sitting in a park, sitting in a cafe, walking in a shopping mall, walking along a busy street) manipulated within-subjects and the need for restoration (attentional fatigue, no attentional fatigue) and immediate social context (in company, alone) manipulated between-subjects. The manipulations relied on previously tested scenarios describing everyday situations that participants were instructed to remember and imagine themselves being in. For each imagined situation (activity-in-environment with antecedent fatigue condition and immediate social context), subjects provided two criterion measures: general preference and the likelihood of achieving psychological restoration. Results The settings received different preference and restoration likelihood ratings as expected, affirming that a busy street, often used in comparisons with natural settings, is not representative of the restorative potential of urban settings. Being with a close friend and attentional fatigue both moderated ratings for specific settings. Findings of additional moderation by country of residence caution against broad generalizations regarding preferences for and the expected restorative effects of different urban settings. Conclusions Preferences and restoration likelihood ratings for urban activity-environment combinations are subject to multiple personal and contextual determinants, including level of attentional fatigue, being alone versus in company, and broader aspects of the urban context that vary across cities and countries. Claims regarding a lack of restorative quality in urban environments are problematic.

Using tailored information and public commitment to improve the environmental quality of farm lands: An example from the Netherlands

By adopting nature conservation practices, farmers can enhance the environmental quality and biodiversity of their land. In this exploratory study, a behavioral intervention that focused on improving Dutch farmers’ nature conservation practices was developed and tested. This intervention was based on insights derived from social psychology and combined tailored information and public commitment. Participating farmers were divided in three groups: one group received tailored information only, one group received both tailored information and a public commitment manipulation, and one group served as a control. A questionnaire measuring relevant aspects of conservation was completed before and after the intervention. Results show that tailored information combined with public commitment making resulted in a stronger desire to engage in conservation, an increase in surface area of non-subsidized natural habitat, and an increase in time farmers spent on conservation. The intervention affected both subsidized and non-subsidized conservation, but the effects were stronger for non-subsidized conservation.