A - Papers appearing in refereed journals
Nguyen, N. T. H., Willcock, S. and Hassan, L. M. 2024. Communications enhance sustainable intentions despite other ongoing crises. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01556-9
Authors | Nguyen, N. T. H., Willcock, S. and Hassan, L. M. |
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Abstract | There is an ongoing trend toward more frequent and multiple crises. While there is a clear need for behaviors to become more sustainable to address the climate crisis, how to achieve this against the backdrop of other crises is unknown. Using a sample of 18,805 participants from the UK, we performed a survey experiment to investigate if communication messages provide a useful tool in nudging intentions toward improved sustainability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that, despite the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, media messaging resulted in increases in sustainability-related intentions for all our communication messaging conditions. Specifically, after our communication was presented, (i) almost 80% of people who were not currently recycling their surgical masks reported their intention to do so; there was a > 70% increase in both (ii) the number of people likely to pick up face mask litter and (iii) the number of people willing to disinfect and reuse their filtering facepiece (FFP) masks 4–6 times, while (iv) there was an increase by 165% in those who would wash cloth masks at 60 °C. Our results highlight that communication messaging can play a useful role in minimizing the trade-offs between multiple crises, as well as maximizing any synergies. To support this, decision-makers and practitioners should encourage the delivery of sustainability advice via multiple sources and across different types of media, while taking steps to address potential misinformation. |
Keywords | Behavior change; COVID-19; Crisis; Mask wearing; Sustainability; Trade-off |
Year of Publication | 2024 |
Journal | Sustainability Science |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01556-9 |
Web address (URL) | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-024-01556-9 |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Funder | Arts and Humanities Research Council |
Natural Environment Research Council | |
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | |
Funder project or code | Resilient Farming Futures |
AgZero+ | |
Between environmental concerns and compliance | |
Publisher's version | |
Accepted author manuscript | |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 14 Sep 2024 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 05 Aug 2024 |
ISSN | 1862-4057 |
Publisher | Springer |
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