Public policy initiatives to tackle climate change and support sustainable development in the United Kingdom

Conclusions

An environmental friendly lifestyle comes at a price, and sometimes making the ‘right’ decision turns out to involve higher costs than taking an unsustainable action.

Through practice, people can develop the habit of taking environmental actions in the medium and long term.

Therefore, cultivating a sense of moral responsibility towards nature and providing the contexts for communities to help and support each other can have the potential to motivate people to adopt long-term sustainable habits for the sake of future generations.

The 'boiling frog' experiment

‘If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly.

As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.’ Daniel Quinn - The Story of B

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Lavinia Ioana Udrea

(Corner 2013)

People do not make a conscious connection between taking a sustainable action (being influenced by choice architects) and the responsibility to reduce their ecological footprint towards environmental protection.

Therefore, if people do not understand and assume the change they need to make, they will not acquire environmental attitudes to motivate them to act pro-environmentally in the long term.

The shared morality approach

‘If children were taught that they would receive a pound coin every time they resisted physically hurting another child, they would not learn that hurting others was wrong – they would learn that restraining themselves was profitable.

But it is precisely this logic that runs through major government initiatives such as the Green Deal. Saving energy is presented not as the right thing to do, but as a way of saving money.’

Can a sense of moral responsibility help people adopt environmental friendly behaviours?

A sense of moral responsibility towards nature can help people calculate the individual costs and impacts of personal actions on our shared environmental context.

A 'values-based' approach to motivate

pro-environmental action

The method I propose involves working with groups of people who are part of the same community and are willing to talk about their moral values, share their experiences and adopt new environmental attitudes.

A person who lives a sustainable life manages to balance her everyday consumption and show respect to nature by taking environmental friendly actions.

In order to adopt a pro-environmental behaviour, we need to make environmental protection a communal priority and at the same time,

be provided with a sharing space where we can feel comfortable to talk to others about the unsustainable habits we want to give up.

‘The ultimate aim is to protect and improve the environment by increasing the contribution from individual and community action.

This will come in particular from moving towards more sustainable patterns of consumption, concerning the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services.’

(DEFRA 2008: 13)

... of the UK public policies discussed

Public policy initiatives to tackle climate change and support sustainable development in the United Kingdom

A great need for feedback

In order to help people become sincerely concerned about our surrounding environment,

we need to be willing to offer constantly constructive feedback to others.

The Provision of Information

People need to be provided with the necessary information and have the specific infrastructure at hand in order to adopt a sustainable lifestyle and take pro-environmental action.

DEFRA' Segmented Strategy

Its mission is the large scale cultivation of pro-environmental behaviour: ‘… capturing the big picture – setting the broad social marketing framework – (...) to help identify priorities, establish common principles and approaches and identify opportunities for specific, cross-cutting or systems based solutions.’ (DEFRA 2008)

Why not think of morality as an instrument that can boost people’s motivation towards the sustainable use of our natural resources?

CONTEXT

Climate change problems are silent

It is expected of us to take the ‘right’ actions that guarantee a sustainable world for our next generations.

Top three UK Public Policies for Influencing Pro-Environmental Behaviour

• Financial incentives
• Nudging
• DEFRA' Segmented Strategy

Lavinia Ioana UDREA

l.i.udrea@keele.ac.uk

UKIERI PhD Exchange Research Fellow

Keele University, UK

TRANSPARENCY IN RESEARCH

This research is not placed on the political level, but on a

social level of activism, where action is not motivated by political force, but by social encouragement.

THE VALUE-ACTION GAP

Values might be a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition, for the ‘right’ behaviour, a sustainable behaviour.

Fuel Economy Label

Car CO2 emission label UK

The aim of the label is to help consumers select models with high fuel economy and low CO2 emissions.

Nudging

An ‘expect error’ approach which is meant to stop the majority of people from taking daily actions, which are harmful to nature and other people.

‘When people need to take more complicated choices, choice architecture comes in with systems that are simplified but in the same time more likely to influence human behaviour on a greater scale.'

(Thaler and Sunstein 2009 : 104)

The Dual Process Theory

The Dual Process Theory (DPT) explains that ‘some actions seem to happen outside conscious control whereas we are fully aware of other’.

The majority of people responds positively to financial incentives and take pro-environmental action in order to avoid paying fees and taxes.

Financial incentives

The Congestion Charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a vehicle within the charging zone between 07:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday.

The Congestion Charge in London