Social-psychological correlates of personal-sphere and diffusion behavior for wildscape gardening

Jones, Megan S.; Niemiec, Rebecca M.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111271

Cited by 13 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…These findings are consistent with work by Geiger and Swim (2016), who found that participants' willingness to discuss climate change is mediated by their beliefs of how competent they would be perceived in a conversation about climate change. Similarly, Jones and Niemiec (2020) found that perceived competence in approaching others was a predictor of past diffusion behavior related to native plant gardening. These results highlight the importance of building people's feelings of competency in communicating with others in outreach and behavioral change programs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Specifically, this approach encourages individuals engaging in the conservation behavior themselves to also engage in diffusion behaviors, which we define as actions that facilitate the uptake of a new behavior by others in one's community. Diffusion behaviors include sharing information with, helping, or providing persuasive arguments to others about a desired behavior (Jones & Niemiec, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Efficacy‐based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Niemiec

Jones

Lischka

et al. 2021

Conservation Biology

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Research suggests that encouraging motivated residents to reach out to others in their social network is an effective strategy for increasing the scale and speed of conservation action adoption. However, little is known about how to effectively encourage large numbers of residents to reach out to others about conservation causes. We examined the influence of normative and efficacy-based messaging at motivating residents to engage in and to encourage others to participate in native plant gardening in their community. To do so, we conducted a field experiment with messages on mailings and tracked native plant vouchers used. Efficacy messages tended to be more effective than normative messages at increasing residents' willingness to reach out to others to encourage conservation action, as indicated by a several percentage point increase in native plant voucher use by residents' friends and neighbors. Messages sometimes had different impacts on residents based on past behaviors and perceptions related to native plant gardening. Among these subgroups, efficacy and combined efficacy and norm messages most effectively encouraged individual and collective actions, as indicated by increased voucher usage. Our findings suggest that interventions that build residents' efficacy for engaging in a conservation behavior and for reaching out to others may be a promising path forward for outreach. However, given our results were significant at a false discovery rate cutoff of 0.25 but not 0.05, more experimental trials are needed to determine the robustness of these trends.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficacy‐based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Niemiec

Jones

Lischka

et al. 2021

Conservation Biology

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“…Jones and Niemiec [81] stated that motivating diffusion behaviour by using messages about sustainability is crucial for reaching enough people to really green the city. Barriers to start diffusion behaviour differ from barriers to start greening your own garden; do I know enough to tell others?…”

Section: For Steenbreekmentioning

confidence: 99%

Greening the City: How to Get Rid of Garden Pavement! The ‘Steenbreek’ Program as a Dutch Example

2021

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The Steenbreek program is a private Dutch program which aims to involve citizens, municipalities and other stakeholders in replacing pavement with vegetation in private gardens. The Dutch approach is characterized by minimal governmental incentives or policy, which leaves a niche for private initiatives like Steenbreek, that mainly work on behavioural change. The aim of this paper is to build a model based on theory that can be used to improve and better evaluate depaving actions that are based on behavioural change. We tested this garden greening behaviour model in the Steenbreek program. The main result is that the model provides an understanding of the ‘how and why’ of the Steenbreek initiatives. Based on this we are able to provide recommendations for the improvement of future initiatives. Steenbreek covers a wide range of projects that together, in very different ways, take into account elements of the theoretical framework; either more on information factors, or on supporting factors, sometimes taking all elements together in a single action. This focus is sometimes understandable when just one element is needed (e.g., support), sometimes more elements could be taken into account to be more effective. If a certain element of the framework is lacking, the change of behaviour will not (or will only partly) take place. The model also gives insight into a more specific approach aimed at the people most susceptible to changing their behaviour, which would make actions more effective.

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“…Humans are highly social and are evolutionarily adapted to learn through social interaction (Csibra & Gergely, 2009). Furthermore, people often learn behaviors by directly copying from others, particularly family or those they regard as knowledgeable, prestigious, or successful, for example (Kendal et al, 2018), or simply by adopting the most common behavior among the majority of their peers (Boyd & Richerson, 1985;Richerson & Boyd, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, despite the promise of a social diffusion approach, research suggests that people who are personally engaged with conservation causes often fail to follow through with reaching out to discuss the issue with others (Barnes‐Mauthe et al, 2015; Geiger & Swim, 2016; Niemiec et al, 2018). This reluctance to engage in social diffusion appears to be the result of cognitive biases that influence how people receive and learn information from others (Berl et al, 2021; van Vugt et al, 2014) as well as a variety of psychosocial barriers (Amel et al, 2017), including: (a) the often‐incorrect normative perception that others do not care about and are not engaged with the conservation issue (Geiger & Swim, 2016; Jachimowicz et al, 2018; Mildenberger & Tingley, 2019; van der Linden et al, 2015); and (b) low expectations of efficacy in reaching out to others—in other words, the belief that their efforts to share information would not make a difference (Bandura, 1998; Sekar, 2020; Niemiec et al, 2019; Jones & Niemiec, 2020; Niemiec et al, 2021; Mead et al, 2012; Swim & Fraser, 2014; Geiger et al, 2017). We posit that these two barriers to the social diffusion of scientific communication are—in part—issues of insufficient information presented in messaging that, if addressed through intentional design of message content, can encourage more widespread diffusion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the impacts of normative and efficacy‐based messaging on the social diffusion of conservation science

Berl

Sekar

Markevich

et al. 2022

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Encouraging people to share science‐based information on environmental issues with others is critical for enhancing the speed and scale of conservation action. However, little experimental research exists that examines how message framing can facilitate the social diffusion of scientific information. We report the results of a series of studies conducted to test the effects of normative and efficacy‐based messaging on Colorado residents' willingness to share scientific information about the state's wolf reintroduction initiative. We distributed messaging using mailings to the general public, surveys of online participant panels, and personal messages from undergraduate students to their own contacts. We then measured participants' individual engagement with the scientific information we provided and their engagement in social behaviors that would encourage further social diffusion of the information. While we find some evidence of increased engagement by people contacted through social diffusion, we do not find any evidence that normative and efficacy‐based messaging encourages people to engage in social diffusion, nor do we find that such messaging enhances individual engagement with the scientific information. We identify several barriers to the sharing of scientific information, which could inform the development of future interventions to scale up biodiversity conservation efforts beyond individual engagement through widespread social diffusion.

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Social-psychological correlates of personal-sphere and diffusion behavior for wildscape gardening

Cited by 13 publications

References 41 publications

Efficacy‐based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Efficacy‐based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Greening the City: How to Get Rid of Garden Pavement! The ‘Steenbreek’ Program as a Dutch Example

Assessing the impacts of normative and efficacy‐based messaging on the social diffusion of conservation science

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