Despite professing to care about the environment and supporting
environmental causes, individuals behave in environmentally
irresponsible ways like driving when they can take public transportation,
littering, or disposing of toxic materials in unsound ways. This is my
fourth exploration of how to encourage individuals to stop behaving
irresponsibly about the environment they allege to care deeply about.
The prior three articles all explored how the norm of environmental
protection could be enlisted in this effort; this Article applies those
theoretical conclusions to the very practical task of getting people to
switch the type of light bulb they use and thus adhere to the concrete
norm of energy conservation.
To help situate this piece better in my prior work, the first article
proposed expanding the abstract environmental protection norm to
include individual environmental responsibility as the approach most
likely to overcome barriers to behavioral change.1
That article
recommended enlisting environmental groups as the most effective
“norm entrepreneurs” to achieve widespread change in personal
environmental conduct.2
The piece concluded that the best way to
change norms and thus change behavior is through education, but thatadditional measures might be necessary.3
The second article expanded on the earlier discussion of norms and
their influence on behavior, and why changing norms, though difficult,
is more effective than other means of inciting behavioral change.4
However, given the difficulty inherent in creating or changing norms,
the second article also identified and evaluated several norm- and
behavior-changing tactics, such as shaming, public education, and
market-based incentives.5
That article concluded that no single tactic is
sufficient to secure both norm and behavior change, but that a
combination of any or all of them when properly tailored to the source
and nature of the harm and when accompanied by public education can
lead to both norm and behavioral change.6
The third piece examined how republican theory supports the
critical role of public education in informing and changing norms and
provides the theoretical framework within which norm and behavior
change can occur.7
All three pieces use as a starting premise the theory
that the current crisis over global climate change has created the
circumstances in which norm change can occur—circumstances that
collectively have created what I call a second environmental republican
moment.8
It is during republican moments that individuals are most
amenable to learning about their responsibilities as citizens.9