How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior

Imagine using augmented reality outdoors on a real city street to re-imagine the street and buildings around you covered in plants, trees, green walls, cars-free - or whatever your eco-future imagination can dream up. Our guests today are Sebastian Schlecht and Robin Roemer. Sebastian is an architect from Germany who co-founded the Lala Ruhr project - an urban design lab that re-imagines cities with biophilic nature-based solutions. Robin is the co-founder of the software startup CityScaper which specializes in augmented reality and urban planning. Sebastian and Robin got together and created this world-first AR project where people could hold up an iPad or iPhone and see a greenified ecotopia version of the street they were on - and they could even design their own. This style of augmented reality is that it’s embedded into a streetscape’s geo coordinates - and that requires creating a 3D model of the street and geolocating the ecological design to fit with the exact location where the user is standing. We’ll be taking a deep dive into the tech stack that includes Lidar, GIS, and Google AR Core, with Robin about 20 mins in. Connect with Sebastian and Robin on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-schlecht-fromgreytogreen/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-roemer/ The Lala Ruhr Lab https://www.lala.ruhr/en/start-en/ City Scaper https://ar-gument.de/   How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my private masterclass in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

We talk with environmental psychologist Anaïs Voşki. She's a researcher at Stanford University studying the effect that seeing the Earth from space has on astronauts' climate change attitudes and their sustainable lifestyles back on Earth. Her recent published research paper is titled “The Ecological Significance of The Overview Effect: Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours in Astronauts.” The Overview Effect is an experience whereby people, especially astronauts, increase their environmental concern when viewing the Earth as a singular object from space. The Overview Effect is credited with not only influencing astronauts directly but also as being a keystone moment in cultivating the modern environmental movement. Before the first moon landing in 1969, no photograph of the Earth had existed. These first photographs of Earth, coined the "pale blue dot," are thought to have elicited a new kind of environmental connection that had not existed before.  Anaïs and I talk about the deeper experience of ecological transcendence that is embodied in The Overview Effect and how it could be applied to the practical design of encouraging more climate action and sustainable behaviors in the wider public. Read the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494420300517 Connect with Anaïs Voşki on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaisvoski/ How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how they can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns.  1:17 Self Contol Skills Are More Important to Eco-Behaviors Than How Much People Care About the Planet Paper: When and how pro-environmental attitudes turn into behavior: The role of costs, benefits, and self-control  6:12 People Have No Idea of the Climate Impact of Various Behaviors And Meat is the Big Ticket CO2 Item Paper: Knowledge, perceived potential and trust as determinants of low- and high-impact pro-environmental behaviours  12:48 You Need to Tell People "**Everyone Else Around You** Supports Renewable Energy Policy" Paper: Effects of perceived social norms on support for renewable energy transition: Moderation by national culture and environmental risks  16:05 Practicing Gratitude for Nature Will Help You Do More Eco Behaviors Paper: Gratitude to nature: Presenting a theory of its conceptualization, measurement, and effects on pro-environmental behavior  19:54 Imagining Yourself Being Old Makes People Take Better Care of the Planet Now Paper: Enhancing environmental resource sustainability by imagining oneself in the future 23:01 Making People Feel Proud AND/OR Making People Feel Guilty About Their Eco-Behaviors Works  Paper: Pride and guilt predict pro-environmental behavior: A meta-analysis of correlational and experimental evidence  The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79 February 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-environmental-psychology/vol/79/suppl/C  The Journal of Environmental Psychology is the premier journal in the field, serving individuals in a wide range of disciplines who have an interest in the scientific study of the transactions and interrelationships between people and their surroundings (including built, social, natural and virtual environments, the use and abuse of nature and natural resources, and sustainability-related behavior). The journal publishes internationally contributed empirical studies and systematic reviews and meta-analyses of research on these topics that advance new insights.  Sign up to katiepatrick.com for my free video course on environmental gamification and behavior design.  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me. I'll listen to your mission over Zoom and share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how the findings can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns.  2:19: People Who Care About Other People, Also Care About the Planet Paper: Self-construals and environmental values in 55 cultures  4:37: Do This To A Menu and All the Meat-Eaters Will Order Vegan Paper: Menu design approaches to promote sustainable vegetarian food choices when dining out  8:26: When Packaging Design Cues An Environmental Action Paper: A meaningful reminder on sustainability: When explicit and implicit packaging cues meet  10.09 Quirky Novel Actions LIke Using Soap Nuts Can Break Other Bad Eco-Habits Paper: Doing Laundry With Biodegradable Soap Nuts: Can Rare and Novel Habits Break Bad Habitual Patterns?   15:26 Personal Experience of Climate Disaster Makes People Support Climate Change Mitigation Paper: Exploring how climate change subjective attribution, personal experience with extremes, concern, and subjective knowledge relate to pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions in the United States  18:18 Telling People It's Eco-Friendly Doesn't Really Work Paper: The Limited Impact of Positive Cueing on Pro-Environmental Choices  20:46 Being Rich and Able to Consider Long Term Future Helps to Consider the Planet Socioeconomic status, time preferences and pro-environmentalism  23:45 How To Stop People Flaking Out (Moral LIscencing) After They Do a Few Good Deeds Paper: Regulatory focus and self-licensing dynamics: A motivational account of behavioural consistency and balancing  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

This episode is about testing if putting people into groups and asking them to compete towards an environmental goal works to get the group members to increase their environmental behavior, compared to asking people as individuals can often fail to get people to take the action. Group competition (like we see in sport) is a powerful psychological mechanism that has been largely untapped by the sustainability profession and it could be harnessed to reach our climate goals.  Our guest today is Assistant Professor Laila Nockur Ph.D. from Aarhus University in Denmark. She recently published a paper titled “Fostering Sustainable Behavior Through Group Competition.” She specializes in the study of the "social dilemma." It's a tricky incentive problem that plagues most environmental change missions. A social dilemma means that to do something for the greater good (which ultimately helps everyone), each individual person has to make a personal sacrifice. These problems all involve an "environmental commons" - a resource we all share like the air, climate, streets, oceans, and forests. Laila's research shows how we can override the vexing problem of the social dilemma by putting people into groups and asking groups to compete against one another to reach an environmental goal.  Read the paper, Fostering sustainable behavior through group competition https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494419305742 How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.  Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick  Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn  Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Have you ever had a hunch that scary or negative images of climate change could turn people away or cause them to shut down? This is what professor Joshua Carlson from North Michigan University has been studying in his cognitive science lab. Environmental communications has often used "negative" images such as drought, fire, melting glaciers, pollution, or deforestation. However, we also use "positive" images that show solutions such as solar panels, green roofs, or wind turbines. Joshua's research tested the effect that positive (solutions-oriented) images and negative (problem-orientated) images had on people's attention and cognition. In this episode, he'll be sharing his insights on how negative climate images were found to slow attention and cause a "freezing" effect which has serious implications for how we communicate about climate change. How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts, down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

You’ve probably heard people say that "You just need to make (an environmentally polluting thing) expensive." Monetary incentives DO work to motivate people, but how much and for how long? And are there other more effective ways to change behavior than literally paying people to go green? In this episode, I speak with professor Florian Kaiser. He’s a former Co-Chief-Editor Journal of Environmental Psychology; Professor of Personality and Social Psychology; Otto-von-Guericke University; in Germany and he’s published many many papers on how environmental attitude influences behavior (which aren’t always the same thing) and some of the less obvious difficulties in getting financial incentives work to drive pro-environmental behavior. Professor Kaiser explains the deeper nuances of how attitude drives behavior from his research into The Campbell Effect. We explore why the value-action gap can be untrue, and how sustainability program designers can't isolate a single behavior out of the context of a person's wider environmental value system. Behavioral nudges, gamification, and incentives work, but they work best on people with high environmental attitudes - and with an environmentally attuned audience, the behaviors will stick long term. His insights illustrate that we can't short-change the development of a person's deeper environmental attitude and jump straight to simple behavioral incentives if we want to achieve deep and permanent social change.  Professor Kaiser's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fgkaiser/ Professor Kaiser's Published Research https://www.ipsy.ovgu.de/ipsy/en/fgk-path-980,1404,31,196-p-210.html Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Sign up to katiepatrick.com for my free video course on environmental gamification and behavior design. Follow me on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Do individual behaviors make a difference? We are often asked to take personal action to help the planet like eating less meat and riding more bikes—but many decree individual behavior as limited and naive in the face of powerful companies and governments. So, how does mass change really come about? There’s more to it than a simple individual-vs-system dichotomy. The core mechanism of how change unfolds through societies is by people — our sensitivities to groups, perceptions, trends, and imitation and the social trends that are passed from human to human that lead to bigger systems changes such as laws, taxes, technologies, and urban design, are carried on the back of human behaviors. Jan Willem Bolderdijk is an associate professor and researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He studies how small groups of people influence bigger systems with respect to sustainability and climate change. Jan's research papers here: Minority influence in climate change mitigation “How do you know someone's vegan?” They won't always tell you. An empirical test of the do-gooder's dilemma Why going green feels good How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Are you getting sick of messages of climate doom and dystopia? There’s another way to talk about the future. In this episode, I'm chatting with Professor Joshua D. Wright on his fascinating research into the power of the “environmental imagination” and how it drives both practical behavior change as well as political action. It’s about communicating “solutions” instead of “problems” – and it makes a dramatic difference to how people respond to the information, form groups, and lead movements. The effect of thinking of an alternative world is more subtle and nuanced than it seems. I think this might be the first research investigating the effect that looking at, and thinking about, ecotopian futures has on our pro-environmental behavior. I have a hunch that this research might be part of a growing zeitgeist of people moving out of overwhelm and into empowerment and agency over the future of our planet. Find his paper here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494420306885 Sign up to my group, The Imagine Project at katiepatrick.com/imagine - we've got a group on Discord and a monthly Zoom devoted to building a movement of imagining a better world. How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

What is environmental leadership? Everyone who is trying to improve the world needs to activate people to do things they have not done before – and every time you are trying to persuade people (especially many people) you are practicing the art of environmental leadership. In this episode, I go through 14 specific things you need to do in order to activate a group of people to make change happen. These techniques are based on the social science of group dynamic theory, social network analysis, social imitation, tipping points, behavioral science, and good ol' human bonding.  There are many climate and sustainability-themed groups that meet regularly to learn, talk, and network. These groups are nice, but this style of group fails at implementing the core principles that can make a group a powerful force for change.  You've probably heard that famous quote by Margaret Mead, "Never think that a small group of people can't change the world. It is in fact, the only thing that ever has." By implementing the 14 techniques in this podcast, you'll be able to step up as an environmental leader of a group (even if it's just a group of a few friends), activate other humans around you, and have the kind of influence in the world you want to have. You might be surprised at how quickly it works! I may host an environmental leadership workshop sometime soon. Send me a DM or email at kp@helloworlde.com if you like the sound of it!  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Sign up to katiepatrick.com for more free environmental gamification and behavior design resources. Follow me on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss