Even though many people have pro-environmental convictions, oftentimes they do not actually engage in pro-environmental behaviour. We hypothesise that behavioural change is hampered by a social feedback loop that reinforces the status quo: People routinely underestimate others’ pro-environmental convictions, and when they expect that others care less, they are unlikely to show more pro-environmental behaviour themselves, which reinforces the general impression that people do not care. This leads to the question of how to effectively elicit a push from the current state to a state in which pro-environmental behaviour becomes more widespread. We examine this question with an agent-based model (ABM) which was parameterised using individual-level survey data collected in several Dutch neighbourhoods. We explore whether interventions that make people talk more about their convictions versus interventions that enhance the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour can trigger individuals to update their expectations and consequently tip the system into a more environmentally-friendly state. Our simulations suggest that enhancing the visibility of pro-environmental behaviour with an intervention may be most effective to motivate durable pro-environmental change. Motivating more talk on the topic only generates temporary effects in our simulations. These results can provide valuable guidance for empirical research on norm-based interventions and it may eventually inform the development of evidence-based policies that effectively encourage pro-environmental change.

中文翻译：

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克服无所作为：基于主体的社会干预建模研究，促进系统性有利于环境的变化

尽管许多人有支持环境的信念，但他们通常并没有真正参与支持环境的行为。我们假设，行为改变受到强化现状的社会反馈循环的阻碍：人们通常会低估他人的环保信念，当他们期望其他人不那么关心时，他们自己就不太可能表现出更多的环保行为，这强化了人们不在乎的普遍印象。这就引出了一个问题：如何有效地推动从当前状态到亲环境行为变得更加普遍的状态。我们使用基于主体的模型（ABM）研究这个问题，该模型使用在荷兰几个社区收集的个人层面的调查数据进行参数化。我们探索让人们更多地谈论他们的信念的干预措施与提高亲环境行为可见性的干预措施是否可以触发个人更新他们的期望，从而使系统进入更加环保的状态。我们的模拟表明，通过干预来提高亲环境行为的可见性可能是激发持久的亲环境变化的最有效方法。激发更多关于该主题的讨论只会在我们的模拟中产生暂时的效果。这些结果可以为基于规范的干预措施的实证研究提供宝贵的指导，并最终可能为有效鼓励有利于环境变化的循证政策的制定提供信息。