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When it comes to convincing citizens to commit to the planet, setting an example or offering financial compensation remain the two most effective solutions, confirms a vast meta-study carried out by an international team of researchers.
Do you want to convince someone to actively commit to the planet? Encourage him to recycle his waste in exchange for financial compensation or to challenge his neighbor to the game of “who will be the greenest?” will no doubt be more effective than drawing him the summary of the latest IPCC report. In any case, this is what a recent meta-analysis carried out by researchers from the universities of Cambridge (England), Yale (United States) and Gothenburg (Sweden) suggests.
Growing pro-environmental behavior
published in the journal PNAS, the research compiles the results of more than 400 studies on the factors that encourage citizens to adopt eco-responsible behaviors on a daily basis. In total, six types of “interventions” were analysed. The programs related, for example, to actions aimed at encouraging recycling, sustainable mobility or even saving electricity.
One of the key findings of this research is that citizens who took part in programs aimed at raising environmental awareness increased their pro-environmental behavior by an average of seven percentage points, compared to those who did not. not take part in this kind of experience. This figure can go up to twelve percentage points in certain types of intervention, in particular with regard to the recycling of waste. A rather low figure, but which nevertheless provides an interesting lead on the more or less effective methods of convincing citizens to get involved. “Interventions were found to be more effective in changing behavior when based on social comparisons or financial incentives, but less effective when based solely on education or feedback”note for example the researchers.
Convince or sensitize?
Efficiency was also increased in small-scale interventions, that is, those involving fewer than 9,000 participants. “This may be because small-scale studies are more often based on direct techniques such as face-to-face interactions, which are more likely to influence behavior”supposes Magnus Bergquist, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg and co-author of the research in a statement. “Learning that people around us have started choosing vegetarian foods or cycling to work is often a better motivation to get people to change their behaviors”adds the latter.
A postulate confirmed in particular by a study recently carried out by Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen. According to this research, it would be easier to convince Internet users to eat vegetarian by relying on our own experience, rather than by exposing tangible facts relating to the climate crisis, for example the carbon impact of the production of meat on the planet.