Talk:Barriers to pro-environmental behaviour

Value-Action Gap Review by Antonia Macris
Positive Feedback:

I really enjoyed reading about this topic. I find the discussion of behaviours in relation to environment very interesting, and appreciate the interdisciplinary (of environment and social psychology) nature of this subject. I like when you explain the link and discern the discrepancy between environmental concern and environmental engagement. The research supporting your article is strong. I like that in the section of barriers of pro-environmental behaviours, you made a distinction between contextual barriers and internal/psychological barriers. I find the barriers you discussed under each sub-section very clear and well explained, and find the subject matter of selected barriers interesting, as they discuss the environment in a way that is not always considered in environmental science, but possibly should be. I like the incorporation of a case study as a concrete example to exhibit the application of your defined concepts.

Constructive Criticism:

Although the research is strong, I feel like the article may read a little too subjective and could be written more factual and matter-of-factly. I also think that there are too many subheadings under internal/psychological barriers. On a similar note, I think that the sub-headings ‘social comparison, sunk costs, descredence, and perceived risk’ are too short compared to limited cognition, under the same sub-heading of intern/psychological barriers. I would suggest either someone grouping them together by a common theme, or elaborating on each more and include more explanation and supporting evident, or more in depth examples/context. Although I like the incorporation of the study, I do think it could have been summarized more, in terms of capturing the case's relation to the different types of barriers.

Testing
hi I.Love.Trees.Yes.I.Do (talk) 20:20, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

HENV: A letter to my editors (hehe)
Hi friends!

Just wanted to let you know I did not write my own wiki article for this assignment, I went and found a section (barriers to behavior) in the article called value-action gap that I wanted to add to. I ended up re-working the introduction, in addition to re-working the whole "Key issues" section, which ended up all being about barriers to behavior -- So some of the work is not mine! (I guess you can compare versions?) --I.Love.Trees.Yes.I.Do (talk) 19:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Ok. Loftslag (talk) 19:37, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Testing the ping weeee
 * I am switching to two other pages because so many are tripled up and nobody seems to have changed or taken that into account :( SORRY! My page has no editor at all :( :( :( Karoap (talk) 23:01, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Peer review of Value-action gap by loftslag a.k.a Étienne
I did not check what you added versus what other people added, so I might be addressing issues in sections you didn’t write.

Two minor comments:

‘’The phrase is associated with environmental geography, relating to attitudes and behaviours surrounding environmental issues.’’

Do you have a central paper in environmental geography on the value-action gap that you can add as a citation here?

‘’These factors influence the reasons behind buying behaviour and environmental considerations are often not taken into account, regardless of the attitudes people have regarding the environment.’’

Sentence doesn’t make sense - a word is missing?

Three general comments:

1) The Dragons if Inaction seem like an interesting way to categorize the psychological causes of inaction, but you don’t refer to the 7 categories further down in your article. It might be good to have a section on each of these categories, instead of the Attitudes/Values/Knowledge/etc sections, to give coherence to your article as a whole.

For example, the ‘’Knowledge’’ section seems like it is the Dragon of ‘’limited cognition’’. The “Attitudes” section seems to be a mix of many Dragons. For example, the “self-efficacy” barrier fits in the ‘’Social comparison” Dragon, then the “inconvenience and time-related pressures” seem to fit in “Sunk costs” or “Perceived risk”. “Values” (the first paragraph) looks like the “Ideologies” Dragon, but the rest seems like a mix of a bunch of other Dragons. You get the idea.

So to recapitulate, I think you have a lot of very relevant information but you need to organize it in a way that gives a flow and a structure to the article. My suggestion is to organize the information around the 7 Dragons of Inaction.

2) Make sure your citations refer to papers that have the statement you are trying to back as a result/conclusion. It seems that for some statements you make, the paper(s) you cite did not actually make the finding, but only mentioned it in their introduction (and cited another paper which made the finding).

Here are some examples:

a)“Importantly, economic growth is one of the main drivers for rising emissions” (Buch & Koch, 2018)

Here you reference the Buch & Koch (2018) paper on wellbeing in the context of degrowth. The point the paper makes is not that economic growth is an important driver of carbon emissions. Even if the paper mentions this statement, it did not prove it.

You should instead cite, for example:

''Antonakakis, N., Chatziantoniou, I., & Filis, G. (2017). Energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: An ethical dilemma. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 68(October 2015), 808–824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.09.105''

and/or

''Ward, J. D., et al. (2016). Is decoupling GDP growth from environmental impact possible? PLoS One, 11(10), e0164733.''

b)“consequently there is a need for a shift in values”

Here you cite Drews & Antal (2016). "Degrowth: A "missile word" that backfires?". This paper does not make a point that there needs to be a shift of values if a society is to abandon economic growth as its main goal.

3) You should introduce ‘’degrowth’’ before developing on the psychology of a degrowth transition (Value section). Then, I think that a good way to integrate degrowth to this article is to highlight how the Value-Action gap is often caused by psychological internalizations of the ideology of growth and structural consequences of an interconnected world based on growth (e.g. no knowledge of environmental issues comes from delocalized production, ideologies are related to capitalism/technologism, social comparison comes from the competition of perpetual growth, etc.). I’m not sure how to perform this integration; I think the best way would be to have a separate section.

Your editing project is very ambitious. You are simultaneously trying to rework the existing article, bring in the analytical framework of the 7 Dragons of inaction and integrate the degrowth perspective. Looking forward to read the final product!

Loftslag (talk) 02:56, 3 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello! Thank you for your comments! As I mentioned in my message to you in my talk page, this was a re-work of an existing article, so I had a very hard time working around what was already written.
 * To address your first two minor comments, the introduction was part of the existing article, I just tried to rearrange it to allow for a better flow. I added a citation needed template for the sentence you suggested. If I have ::time I will try and find a paper for it. Secondly, I am not sure what the previous author was trying to say in the second sentence you mentioned, but I added a word to try and make it work, as well as a citation needed template. I ::have already taken away a lot of what they had written due to lack of citation so I’m trying to limit myself at this point.
 * Note: everything with a citation needed template is not mine.


 * Response to your general comments:
 * 1: I had trouble with this particular section because the author in fact introduces 33 barriers within 7 sections and I wasn’t sure how to incorporate each of these without getting flagged for plagiarism… I was also hesitant to do this because I have more sources for certain examples and the sections will seem uneven (I will try to find more sources for the sections that lacking). I switched the Internal barriers section around to fit the structure you suggested. One problem is I am not positive that I put some barriers in the “correct” category… I do like this more though.
 * 2: Oops, I see what you mean, thank you and noted. I decided to delete this sentence anyhow because it felt like I was trying to incorporate degrowth ideas and you are right that was ambitious.
 * 3: I took out degrowth.


 * Thanks again :) -- I.Love.Trees.Yes.I.Do (talk) 20:05, 5 April 2019 (UTC)