Application of Behavioural Determinants to Rural Resilience & Creating Collective Change
While behavioural modifications fundamentally occur at the level of the individual, effective climate action ultimately emerges from a collective basis when communities work cohesively to enact positive change.23 Therefore, it is crucial to coordinate the shift from individual behaviour change to collective action. A part of this solution will involve applying the behavioural determinants of climate-related behaviour from an individual level to a more collective dimension where many people’s combined climate efforts can drive forward cooperative change. The success of this process will also require an integrated approach between sectors such as health authorities, government, businesses, and academic institutions.4
Dr. Alan Ruddiman discusses how to encourage climate action influence including stepping out of our comfort zones and asking more questions (5:07)
From Individual Behaviour to Collective Action
Earlier, the psychological constructs of Bandura’s social cognitive theory helped us comprehend individual behaviour as it relates to pro-environmental behaviour. By synthesizing the concepts of self-efficacy and outcome expectancy, we can better understand the movement from individual behaviour change to collective action. Collective outcome expectancy is defined as a measure of people’s judgements of whether collective action can help achieve the collective goal.23 In other words, it brings into question whether “individuals believe that collective actions can have a significant impact on the collective problem is likely to contribute to their decision-making in the context of large-scale problems.”23 Collective outcome efficacy can be related to perceptions of how well the outcomes of collective actions will help to meet collective goals. These statements can be worded ‘If … (collective behaviour), then … (achievement of collective goal).’23
Thinking ahead, with consideration to social cognitive theory as a tool to encourage collective behaviour against climate change, an important takeaway is to modify climate change messaging, highlighting the successes and progress of populations rather than the shortcomings that have given rise to low self-efficacy.26
Social Norms as a Driver of Collective Action
Beyond this, social norms can be manipulated to favour collective action around climate change.27 Social norms refer to predominant behavioural patterns within a group, supported by a shared understanding of acceptable actions and sustained through social interactions within that group.28 Anthropogenic activities that are damaging to the climate are embedded in our social norms, such as driving, flying, meat consumption, and plastic use, to name a few.26
In theory, changing the social norms around negative climate behaviour can serve as a potential solution, however, they are often rigid and difficult to manipulate. This is where dynamic norms may function as a potential solution, examining how trends in norms or changes in others’ behaviours and beliefs over time can be utilized to move the current, static social norms to those that are more sustainable.26 While an example of a static norm is ‘most people eat meat,’ the alternative dynamic norm could be ‘more and more people are reducing how much meat they eat.’ As such, dynamic norms imply ongoing and progressive changes in trends, whereas static norms are perceived as comparatively stagnate. An example of this can be found in a study where “people conserved more water in a laboratory setting when they learned that a growing minority of people conserved water as compared to learning simply that a minority did.”29 Thus, it is suggested that some of the main drivers fuelling interest in sustainable behaviour were related to their knowledge of other people’s change in behaviour and the expectation of this trend continuing forward.
As such, if more sustainable behaviours were framed to suggest the eventual establishment of these behaviours as the norm (pre-conformity), people may show a stronger inclination to make these changes.30 Overall, mechanisms consequently reveal individuals’ sensitivity to information about changes in collective behaviour and give individuals the power to enact social change rather than conforming to current negative norms.
As stated previously, rural populations are generally more collectivist. This is a positive characteristic that may generate collective action against climate change in these populations due to a stronger sense of social trust in communities, and thus serving as motivation to change norms and behaviour. However, it remains important not to overgeneralize rural populations as to “avoid the perspective of a simple and homogeneous group of actors may constitute a crucial element that will determine whether or not individuals engage in adaptation.”24
Dr. Bob Woollard discusses the importance of the collective in climate action (1:59)
