Dr Ganga Shreedhar

This course is available on the MSc in Behavioural Science, MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc in Psychology of Economic Life, MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

We live on a changing planet and need to confront multiple planetary problems like climate change and mass extinction. Debates about understanding and changing human behaviour are at the centre of solutions to these problems.

This course seeks to impart knowledge of, and critical thinking about, the interconnections between human behaviour and planetary change. Modules will approach environmental and ecological or “eco-behaviour” change, starting at the individual-level and moving onto to collective and societal levels. The course will discuss behavioural theories and frameworks to understand individual and structural antecedents and consequences of eco-behaviours, and how such factors can be incorporated into the design behavioural interventions and solutions. The course is interdisciplinary and draws on frameworks, concepts and tools from Behavioural Environmental and Ecological Economics, and Environmental and Social Psychology, amongst other fields.

Aims:

This course aims to:

• Introduce key complex planetary problems including the idea of coupled human- environmental systems.

• Critically consider how we perceive and understand planetary problems and non-human nature, and how such factors impact behaviour.

• Investigate debates about pro-environmental and ecological behaviours or eco-behaviours including the main models, measures and applications.

• Outline the framework of social and socio-ecological dilemmas and discuss human motivations and behaviour within this framework.

• Examine eco-behaviours in social and societal group contexts and processes.

• Critically compare and contrast range of behavioural interventions targeting eco-behaviours.

• Locate debates about eco-behaviour change within larger debates about planetary health and systems transformations.

Learning outcomes:

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Interpret and critically appraise planetary problems from a behavioural perspective.

• Interpret and critically appraise the models and concepts used to understand eco-behaviour and motivations

• Understand eco-behaviour dynamics within the individual and across social and societal groups.

• Evaluate the potential of different interventions to change eco-behaviour in the context of the need for systems transformations.

• Work cooperatively with peers to carry out a collaborative group project.

• Work independently and creatively by proposing and designing a novel behaviour change intervention.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the WT.

The course will be delivered through a combination of interactive classes/seminars and lectures and supplementary interactive live activities. There will be structured learning activities throughout the course, espeically in the seminars, including student presentations and group work. 

There will be no teaching during reading week (Week 6). 

Preparing a research proposal for an intervention to change an eco-behaviour (500 words) based on a real-life case study.

• Clayton, S., Devine-Wright, P., Stern, P.C., Whitmarsh, L., Carrico, A., Steg, L., Swim, J. and Bonnes, M., 2015. Psychological research and global climate change. Nature Climate Change, 5(7), pp.640-646.

• Weber, E.U., 2020. Heads in the Sand: Why We Fail to Foresee and Contain Catastrophe. Foreign Aff., 99, p.20.

• Yoeli, E., Budescu, D.V., Carrico, A.R., Delmas, M.A., DeShazo, J.R., Ferraro, P.J., Forster, H.A., Kunreuther, H., Larrick, R.P., Lubell, M. and Markowitz, E.M., 2017. Behavioral science tools to strengthen energy & environmental policy. Behavioral Science & Policy, 3(1), pp.68-79.

• Carlsson, F., Gravert, C., Johansson-Stenman, O., & Kurz, V. (2021). The use of green nudges as an environmental policy instrument. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 15(2), 216-237.

• Ostrom, E., 2010. Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change. Global environmental change, 20(4), pp.550-557.

• Adams, M., 2021. Critical psychologies and climate change. Current Opinion in Psychology.

• Horton, R., Beaglehole, R., Bonita, R., Raeburn, J., McKee, M. and Wall, S., 2014. From public to planetary health: a manifesto. The Lancet, 383(9920), p.847.

• Steffen, Will, Katherine Richardson, Johan Rockström, Sarah E. Cornell, Ingo Fetzer, Elena M. Bennett, Reinette Biggs et al. "Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet." Science 347, no. 6223 (2015): 1259855.

Research proposal (50%), reflective learning report (25%) and presentation (25%) in the ST.

The summative assignment is based on four components:

• Symposium and Group presentation [Attendance, Participation & Group presentation] (25%)

• Reflective report on symposium (25%)

• Research proposal (50%)

Please note: Students on MSc Behavioural Science taking this course as a dissertation option (PB4D7) must attend the symposium and group presentation.