The report Behavior Change for Nature: A Behavioral Science Toolkit for Practitioners is a guide for professionals on how behavioral science can be better applied to campaigns and programs that seek to change the behavior of a group of people. Firstly, it explains why behavior change is so critical for tackling the many facets of environmental decline that we face and looks at audiences that should be addressed to help combat this loss. It also emphasizes the importance of regulation and legislation, but discusses situations where they are ineffective. The development of new strategies for motivating behavior change is absolutely critical, and this report addresses some of those strategies and how to put them into practice. This report is useful because it dives deeply into behavioral psychology’s relevance and applicability to our society to meet the goals that are necessary if we want to stop the global climate crisis and habitat loss that we face. In our project, knowing these techniques while also understand how to go about implementing them will be extremely valuable, as our campaign will seek to change student behavior here at Dickinson.
Rare and The Behavioural Insights Team. (2019). Behavior Change For Nature: A Behavioral
Science Toolkit for Practitioners. Arlington, VA: Rare.
The article Food Science Challenge: Translating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to Bring About Real Behavior Change is the result of two discussions between food and nutrition scientists on how to meet the goals of shifting the American diet to be more aligned with dietary recommendations set by the US government. The importance of the family in integrating food-related behavior change stood out to me in this article, and made me wonder about how that is different here at Dickinson, where everyone is in charge of their own diets. A point of commonality is that these changes were stressed as needing to be as seamless as possible to integrate into our daily routines, otherwise they will not work. Everyone on this campus has likely at least heard of the climate crisis and probably has their own opinion. It will be difficult if not completely impractical to try to convince people to change their beliefs – if they do not already align with actions that are less impactful on the environment – just by throwing raw information about the environmental impact of choosing certain foods over others. This article also made me think about how it will be important for Giuseppe and I to be in communication with Dining Services throughout this process and adapt to their goals. I know that Dining Services has a plan to reduce meat consumption on campus by 25%, so it will be critical for us to meet with them to see what they have planned already, and how our project can contribute.
Rowe, Sylvia, et al. “Food Science Challenge: Translating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to Bring About Real Behavior Change.” Journal of Food Science, vol. 76, no. 1, 2011, pp. R29–R37., doi:10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01973.x.
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