Environmental issues are a hot topic at the moment, with issues
such as renewable energy and climate change at the top of the
political agenda. Even though we might come up with
technological solutions for some environmental challenges facing
us, there will almost certainly be a need for some degree of
behavior change from the general population. Therefore,
understanding the psychology that underpins whether or not
people decide to change their behavior to protect the
environment is critical. I’m currently working on understanding
just this in my Ph.D. at the University of Queensland in
Australia and used SurveyMonkey to help understand why people do
or do not change their behavior to help protect the environment.
My research looks at how our own decisions about whether or not
to engage in behaviors to help the environment are affected by
our perceptions of what other people around us are doing. We
know from past research that these perceptions (what we call
social norms) have a powerful impact on behavior. N