Stewart Barr

Factors Influencing Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors A U.K. Case Study of Household Waste Management

Three waste management behaviors (waste reduction, reuse, and recycling) were examined with the use of a conceptual framework developed by the author. It was posited that environmental values, situational characteristics, and psychological factors all play a significant role in the prediction of waste management behavior, within the context of a core intention-behavior relationship. The framework was tested in a self-report questionnaire of 673 residents of Exeter, UK. It was found that the predictors of reduction, reuse, and recycling behavior differed significantly, with reduction and reuse being predicted by underlying environmental values, knowledge, and concern-based variables. Recycling behavior was, in contrast, characterized as highly normative behavior. The use of the approach taken for investigating other environmental behaviors is examined.

Strategies for sustainability: citizens and responsible environmental behaviour

Policymakers are becoming increasingly interested in the means by which individuals can be encouraged to engage in environmental actions around the home. This paper uses evidence from existing empirical research and a large questionnaire survey undertaken by the author to argue that environmental action is open to a range of influences, focusing especially on environmental values, situational characteristics and psychological variables. Accordingly, the paper asserts that strategies for promoting environmentally responsible behaviours (such as energy saving, water conservation and waste recycling) should take account of these factors. The implications for the study of environmental behaviour are considered.

A conceptual framework for understanding and analysing attitudes towards household-waste management.

The disposal of household waste has become a major problem for all industrialised countries. Public policy has focused on changing household attitudes by information campaigns. However, the link between environmental attitudes and actions is a very complex one. The authors develop a conceptual framework with three predictors: environmental values, situational variables, and psychological variables. This framework can be used to formulate both questionnaire design and data analysis. The paper demonstrates its utility with a report on recent research that has used the framework to provide important new findings about different attitudes and actions to waste minimisation, waste reuse, and waste recycling. These findings have clear implications for public policy as well as lending considerable empirical support to the original conceptualisation offered by the

Attitudes towards Recycling Household Waste in Exeter, Devon: Quantitative and qualitative approaches

Recycling of household waste has become a very problematic area of British local government policy-making in which central government has set ambitious targets. Although local government can provide facilities for recycling, the attitudes of residents will be crucial if these targets are to be met. Accordingly, this paper outlines a framework for studying how households decide to recycle or not. The framework has been tested in Exeter in south-west England where a major survey found that respondents were much more likely to recycle if they had access to a structured kerbside recycling scheme. Many other factors influenced their attitudes and behaviours towards recycling, including their acceptance of the activity and their perception of the benefits and problems of recycling as a whole. The research uses the quantitative and qualitative data from the survey to demonstrate how individual attitudes can impact on recycling and how such research can yield useful data to enable policy-makers to adapt measures accordingly.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND ANALYZING ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOUR

Abstract Encouraging environmental action by citizens in developed nations has become a major priority for governments who are seeking to reach environmental targets by exhorting individuals to participate in a range of behaviours to ameliorate the negative impact of their lifestyles. Such activities conventionally include energy saving, water conservation, waste management and forms of ‘green’ consumption. Current policy discourses are focused around a linear model of behaviour, which assumes that an awareness of environmental problems and knowledge of how to tackle them will lead to individual ameliorative actions. This paper explores these assumptions by applying a previously developed conceptual framework (Barr et al. 2001) to a range of environmental actions, to show how a variety of different factors influence environmental action. Using data from a major (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project in Devon, United Kingdom, data on environmental actions collected during the project are interrogated to uncover the relationships between environmental actions and how these are influenced by values, personal situations and attitudes. The research demonstrates that environmental action is structured around peoples everyday lifestyles (rather than a compartmentalized notion of behaviour) and that these have radically different antecedents.

A Novel Conceptual Framework for Examining Environmental Behavior in Large Organizations A Case Study of the Cornwall National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom

This article is concerned with the development of a conceptual framework of the key antecedents that lead to sustainable environmental behavior amongst employees within a large organizational setting. A range of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed in the study to examine behavior. Using the Cornwall National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom as a case study, the research demonstrated that both organizational and individual/cognitive factors served as key predictors for sustainable waste behavior. However, these factors did not work in isolation but rather, within a dynamic, holistic, intrarelated, and interrelated conceptual framework to ultimately determine individual behavior. The results suggest the need to address both categories of variables when developing policies to achieve greater sustainability in the behavior of employees within large organizations.

Environment and Society : Sustainability, Policy and the Citizen

Contents: Foreword Preface Part 1 Contexts: Green dilemmas Sustainability Policy. Part 2 Perspectives: Behaviour change: policy and practice The social psychology of environmental action. Part 3 Approaches: Framing environmental practice Sustainable lifestyles The value-action gap. Part 4 Applications: Changing behaviour: a social marketing approach Sustainability, citizens and progress Bibliography Index.

Resilient communities: sustainabilities in transition

In this brief commentary, we focus on the notion of resilient communities in developed nations through the lens of social, economic and individual “transitions”. In so doing, we aim to chart the trajectory of the shifts between “thinking global and acting local” and the new emphasis is being placed on reactions to ecological and economic threats in particular localities. We do this initially by outlining three changes that have occurred in many communities in the last 20 years that mark shifts in the conceptual, pragmatic and political responses to sustainability before considering the ways in which resilience, as a conceptual device, has been deployed in a particular niche alongside other reactions to global change, such as vulnerability, mitigation and adaptation. The commentary will then examine the ways in which pathways to resilience are being shaped through the evolving discourse of transition, which is rapidly becoming the vehicle for accelerating a sense of community resilience in Western nations. Through an exploration of transition, we will provide some reflections on the potential opportunities and challenges for creating resilient and sustainable communities in an age of climate change and “Peak Oil”.

A Smarter Choice? Exploring the Behaviour Change Agenda for Environmentally Sustainable Mobility

This paper explores some of the limitations of individualistic approaches towards the study and promotion of environmentally sustainable practices within the context of efforts by states to tackle global climate change. Using the example of government attempts to promote sustainable mobility through behavioural shifts amongst citizens in the UK, the paper argues that an overreliance on individualistic approaches poses three major challenges through the ways in which: (1) mobility is intricately entwined with social practices and consumption settings; (2) practices of (un)sustainable mobility are related to the structure and organisation of physical environments; and (3) solutions for sustainable mobility are framed through narrow political lenses that fail to address the potential social transformations needed to tackle climate change. Accordingly, the paper argues that both researchers and policy makers need to revisit the assumptions made concerning the role of individuals and their relationship to underlying sociostructural and political challenges for reducing carbon emissions from transport.

Sustainable Lifestyles: Sites, Practices, and Policy

Proenvironmental behaviour change remains a high priority for many governments and agencies and there are now numerous programmes aimed at encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable forms of living. However, although programmes for addressing behaviour change in and around the home are well developed, there has been significantly less attention paid to activities beyond this site of practice. This is despite the environmental implications of consumption choices for leisure, tourism, and work-related activities. Through focusing on sites of practice as a key framing device, this paper uses data from a series of in-depth interviews to identify three major challenges for academics and practitioners concerned with understanding and promoting more environmentally responsible behaviour. First, attention must shift beyond the home as a site of environmental practice to consider the ways in which individuals respond to exhortations towards ‘greener’ lifestyles in other high-consumption and carbon-intensive settings, Second, in broadening the scope of environmental practice, policy makers need to revisit their reliance on segmentation models and related social marketing approaches. This is in the light of data that suggest those with strong environmental commitments in the home are often reluctant to engage in similar commitments in other sites of practice. Third, researchers and policy makers therefore need to move beyond the traditional ‘siting’ of environmental practice towards a spatially sophisticated conceptualisation that accounts for the multiple settings of consumption through mapping the relationships that exist between sites of practice.