Good Moves #1: Bas Verplanken
Welcome to Good Moves, our free newsletter about behaviour change & sustainability
Welcome everyone.
At Behaven, we believe changing behaviour is essential to achieve social and environmental sustainability. And Good Moves is part of our efforts to make that happen.
Combining experts interviews, scientific research and case studies, Good Moves is meant to become an addition to your toolbox. So, if you’re aiming to encourage effective behaviour change that will benefit people and the planet, this newsletter is for you.
Without further ado, here’s what we have for you in this first episode:
Bas Verplanken on Sustainability and Habits
“Ideally, sustainable behaviours should continue automatically and persistently and acquire the features of habits, without being challenged by attitudes.” Prof Bas Verplanken, the globally renowned expert on habits discusses habits and sustainable behaviours.
5 Proven Strategies for Environmental Behaviours
What strategies work best when it comes to encouraging sustainable behaviours? Our very own Julia Terlet summarises this recent paper by Dr Gianluca Grilli and Prof John Curtis assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the most common strategies:
Education and awareness
Outreach and relationship building
Social influence
Nudges
Incentives
Did You See This?
The notion of a ‘finite pool of worry’ implies that people have limited mental capacity when it comes to worrying about specific issues. The more worried they are about something, the less mental bandwidth they have left to worry about other issues.
Yet, research sponsored by the European Research Council recently found that, as attention to and worry about Covid-19 increased, attention to climate change decreased but worry about climatic issues did not.