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Human-environment feedback and the consistency of proenvironmental behavior
Claire Ecotière1, Sylvain Billiard2, Jean-Baptiste André3
1Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, IP Paris, Palaiseau, France.
Plos Computational Biology
|September 18, 2023
Summary
Consistent proenvironmental behavior is key to addressing climate change. Mathematical modeling shows that social pressure combined with environmental feedback drives adoption of costly green actions when social interactions are rapid.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Behavioral Economics
- Mathematical Modeling
Background:
- Global environmental crises necessitate widespread proenvironmental behavior.
- Understanding the interplay of individual assessment and social dynamics is crucial for promoting sustainable actions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To model the behavior-environment feedback loop influencing proenvironmental behavior adoption.
- To investigate how individual assessment and social interactions affect consistent adoption of green actions.
Main Methods:
- Developed a stochastic individual-based mathematical model.
- Analyzed behavior switching between 'active' (proenvironmental) and 'baseline' states.
- Approximated system dynamics using ordinary differential equations and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
Main Results:
- Combined social and environmental feedbacks promote costly proenvironmental behavior adoption.
- Strong social pressure is necessary but not sufficient for consistent adoption.
- Faster social interaction timescales than individual assessment, and small environmental impact differences, are critical.
Conclusions:
- Social feedback loops can drive widespread adoption of proenvironmental behaviors.
- A scenario for significant environmental impact reduction involves increasing social pressure for green actions.
- Model suggests optimal conditions for promoting costly but impactful proenvironmental actions.
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