Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:44:50.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Still ‘Minding the Gap’ Sixteen Years Later: (Re)Storying Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2018

Lisa Siegel*
Affiliation:
Southern Cross University, Sustainability, Environment & Education (SEE) Research Cluster, School of Education, Coffs Harbour, Australia
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles
Affiliation:
Southern Cross University, Sustainability, Environment & Education (SEE) Research Cluster, School of Education, Gold Coast, Australia
Anne Bellert
Affiliation:
Southern Cross University, Sustainability, Environment & Education (SEE) Research Cluster, School of Education, Coffs Harbour, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Lisa Siegel, Southern Cross University, Sustainability, Environment & Education (SEE) Research Cluster, Coffs Harbour Campus, Hogbin Drive, Coffs Harbour NSW 2450, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

In their seminal 2002 paper, Kollmuss and Agyeman asked the important question ‘Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behaviour?’ The article has had a remarkably high rate of readership, with 64,900 electronic views to date, and 16 years later, this question remains significant. But are environmental educators and researchers any closer to understanding why people engage in pro-environmental behaviour? For this special issue of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education and its focus on ecologising education, it is timely not only to re-explore but to (re)story the concepts of environmental knowledge, environmental awareness and pro-environmental behaviour, in order to generate fertile ground for the creation of new understandings and practices in environmental education. After considering relevant literature published between 2000 and 2018, this article offers an original framework for considering the complex, varied, and interconnected influences on the development of pro-environmental behaviour by (re)storying the development of pro-environmental behaviour through articulating it as a living forest.

Type
Feature Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Language and perception in a more than human world. New York, NY: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Alam, S. (2008). Majority world: Challenging the West's rhetoric of democracy. Amerasia Journal, 34, 8798. doi:10.17953/amer.34.1.l3176027k4q614v5Google Scholar
Bamberg, S., & Möser, G. (2007). Twenty years after Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera: A new meta-analysis of psycho-social determinants of pro-environmental behaviour. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27, 1425. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2006.12.002Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Biesta, G., & Tedder, M. (2007). Agency and learning in the lifecourse: Towards an ecological perspective. Studies in the Education of Adults, 39, 132149. doi:10.1080/02660830.2007.11661545Google Scholar
Braun, T., Cottrell, R., & Dierkes, P. (2018). Fostering changes in attitude, knowledge and behavior: demographic variation in environmental education effects. Environmental Education Research, 24, 122. doi:10.1080/13504622.2017.1343279Google Scholar
Chawla, L., & Cushing, D.F. (2007). Education for strategic environmental behavior. Environmental Education Research, 13, 437452. doi:10.1080/13504620701581539Google Scholar
Chawla, L., & Derr, V. (2012). The development of conservation behaviors in childhood and youth. In Clayton, S. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of environmental and conservation psychology (pp. 527555). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cooke, A.N., Fielding, K.S., & Louis, W.R. (2016). Environmentally active people: The role of autonomy, relatedness, competence and self-determined motivation. Environmental Education Research, 22, 631657. doi:10.1080/13504622.2015.1054262Google Scholar
Courtenay-Hall, P., & Rogers, L. (2002). Gaps in mind: Problems in environmental knowledge-behaviour modelling research. Environmental Education Research, 8, 283297. doi:10.1080/13504620220145438Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Doyle, W. (2015). The many faces of agency. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10, 275279. doi:10.1007/s11422-014-9610-3Google Scholar
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103, 9621023. doi:10.1086/231294Google Scholar
Ernst, J., Blood, N., & Beery, T. (2017). Environmental action and student environmental leaders: Exploring the influence of environmental attitudes, locus of control, and sense of personal responsibility. Environmental Education Research, 23, 149175. doi:10.1080/13504622.2015.1068278Google Scholar
Ferrando, F. (2013). Posthumanism, transhumanism, antihumanism, metahumanism, and new materialisms: Differences and relations. An International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts, 8, 2632.Google Scholar
Frick, J., Kaiser, F.G., & Wilson, M. (2004). Environmental knowledge and conservation behavior: exploring prevalence and structure in a representative sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 15971613. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2004.02.015Google Scholar
Gerbaudo, P. (2012). Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto. In Haraway, D. (Ed.), Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of Nature. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making kin. Environmental Humanities, 6, 159165.Google Scholar
Heimlich, J.E., & Ardoin, N.M. (2008). Understanding behaviour to understand behavior change: A literature review. Environmental Education Research, 14, 215237. doi:10.1080/13504620802148881Google Scholar
Hines, J.M., Hungerford, H.R., & Tomera, A.N. (1987). Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis. The Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 18. doi:10.1080/00958964.1987.9943482Google Scholar
Jensen, B.B. (2002). Knowledge, action and pro-environmental behaviour. Environmental Education Research, 8, 325334. doi:10.1080/13504620220145474Google Scholar
Kashima, Y., Paladino, A., & Margetts, E.A. (2014). Environmentalist identity and environmental striving. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 38, 6475. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.12.014Google Scholar
Kollmuss, A., & Agyeman, J. (2002). Mind the gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research, 8, 239260. doi:10.1080/1350462022014540 1Google Scholar
Macy, J., & Johnstone, C. (2012). Active hope: How to face the mess we're in without going crazy. Warriewood, Australia: Finch.Google Scholar
Macy, J., & Brown, M. (2014). Coming back to life. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers.Google Scholar
Maser, C., Claridge, A., & Trappe, J. (2008). Trees, truffles, and beasts: How forests function. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj1b7.14Google Scholar
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. (2017). Who cares about the environment: A survey of the environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of people in New South Wales in 2015. Retrieved from http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/who-cares-about-the-environment-2015-cross-tabulated-survey-dataGoogle Scholar
Osbaldiston, R., & Schott, J.P. (2012). Environmental sustainability and behavioral science: Meta-analysis of proenvironmental behavior experiments. Environment & Behavior, 44, 257299. doi:10.1177/0013916511402673Google Scholar
Redondo, I., & Puelles, M. (2017). The connection between environmental attitude–behavior gap and other individual inconsistencies: A call for strengthening self-control. International Research in Geographical & Environmental Education, 26, 107120. doi:10.1080/10382046.2016.1235361Google Scholar
Snaza, N., Appelbaum, P., Bayne, S., Carlson, D., Morris, M., Rotas, N., . . . Weaver, J. (2014). Toward a posthumanist education. JCT: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30, 3955.Google Scholar
Snaza, N., & Weaver, J. (2015). Posthumanism and educational research. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stapleton, S.R. (2015). Environmental identity development through social interactions, action, and recognition. The Journal of Environmental Education, 46, 94113. doi:10.1080/00958964.2014.1000813Google Scholar
Stern, P.C. (2000). New environmental theories: Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 407424. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00175Google Scholar
Taylor, C.A. (2016). Edu-crafting a cacaphonous ecology: Posthumanist research practices for education. In Taylor, C.A. & Hughes, C. (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education (pp. 524). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Taylor, D., & Segal, D. (2015). Environmental education that engages the head, heart and hands: The relevance of applied systems theory in times of uncertainty. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education, 28, 49.Google Scholar
Uitto, A., Boeve-de Pauw, J., & Saloranta, S. (2015). Participatory school experiences as facilitators for adolescents’ ecological behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 43, 5565. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.007Google Scholar
Volk, T.L., & Hungerford, H.R. (1990). Changing learner behavior through environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education, 21, 821.Google Scholar
Wallin, J.J. (2017). Pedagogy at the brink of the post-anthropocene. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49, 10991111. doi:10.1080/00131857.2016.1163246Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, L., & O'Neill, S. (2010). Green identity, green living? The role of pro-environmental self-identity in determining consistency across diverse pro-environmental behaviours. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 305314. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.01.003Google Scholar
Wohlleben, P. (2015). The hidden life of trees: What they feel, how they communicate — Discoveries from a secret world. Melbourne, Australia: Black Inc.Google Scholar