The Environmental “Awareness” Paradox
March 10th, 2010 | 
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Let’s take a fresh look at a couple of tired old sayings you’ve probably heard a million times, and examine what they mean when comes to raising environmental awareness and encouraging everyday citizens to do their part to preserve the planet for future generations.
“Which comes first the chicken or the egg?”
In our world, this classic dilemma could be rephrased as “Which comes first, environmental awareness or environmental action?” You could be forgiven for answering that environmental awareness comes first, because that it is how it appears to the untrained eye.
But social and behavior research often finds otherwise — small actions lead to big attitude changes, and then on to the big behavior changes. In his classic book, “Fostering Sustainable Behavior,” social marketing guru Doug McKenzie Mohr cites a number of cases where the simplest possible behavior — such as holding a flashlight for an energy auditor — becomes the first step in a journey that leads to major energy conservation efforts around the house.
I like to tell my clients that the smallest and easiest of environmental actions — replacing an incandescent lightbulb, making a $30 donation, signing an electronic petition — matter. They matter a lot if you see them as a kind of “gateway drug” for the person who does them. If you can make that person aware of how good it feels to make a little difference, some will come back looking for a bigger fix. Next time around, they might insulate their attic, make a large donation, or speak up for the environmental at a public hearing.
“A body at rest stays at rest, a body in motion stays in motion.”
In the world of behavior change psychology, that might be rephrased this way: “a body that pays lip service to the environment will probably pay more lip service, but a body that takes a first step for the environment is likely to take a second.”
When we set out to just raise environmental awareness, what we often end up producing is lip service, instead. If you want that awareness to lead to some action, it helps a lot to define that action and aim for that directly.
What both of these reinterpretations have in common, is that they point to the importance of beginning with behavior for your environmental communications. Set a goal of motivating your audience to take some small action, and follow up afterwards to lavish your audience with praise and gratitude — and suggest the next, more meaningful action they can take.
Posted in 1. Begin with Behavior
The egg came first
I have to agree that, in my case, action came before awareness. By cleaning up shopping carts and other trash from the Black River, I became aware of the larger issues pertaining to local water quality and groundwater, and am now 10 years strong leading a non-profit river team that I founded. We still clean up the river every year, and every year more people ask questions about our river. The more you do, the more you become interested in knowing more about what you’re doing, so to speak.
Check out the movie My Blue Heaven sometime. You’ll notice a quote from Vinny (aka Todd), something to the effect that “sometimes you need to change from the outside in.”
He’s referring to a sartorially challenged FBI agent, tasked with getting him to testify at trial safely – but the charming Vinny makes a relevant point.
I can definitely see how awareness could come first and how it could, of course, cause environmental action. But I believe action does come first, as some might argue with global warming. It is through our actions that we have caused the environment to be where it is. It started with action, we went through awareness, and now we are back to action – this time making amends for what we did in the first place!
A body in motion slows down and stops unless energy is applied to keep overcoming inertia. Your point is well taken; it is harder to move a body at rest than one already moving. Yet time and again people stop, backslide, and change course. It is the rare individual who can keep moving forward without a heaping helping of energy, be it praise or results or community support.