Articles
Environmental footprinting for greener gardens: how might personalised calculations of gardening impacts deliver behaviour change?
Article number
1429_52
Pages
431 – 438
Language
English
Abstract
There is increasing recognition of the benefits gardens can provide for environmental and human health.
Nevertheless, some garden design and management choices can have negative impacts.
The decision-making and behaviours of gardeners primarily determine whether gardening outcomes are beneficial.
Hence, there is a need to support gardeners to make choices that benefit human and environmental health, particularly in urban contexts.
Environmental footprinting (providing quantitative measures of anthropogenic environmental impacts), can be used to influence pro-environmental behaviour change.
It can address information-related determinants of environmentally impactful behaviours by providing knowledge, shifting perceptions of risks, and illustrating comparative social norms (comparing an individual’s footprint with the footprints of others). This study uses a nationally representative data set of UK adults to investigate intentions to use a footprinting tool for quantifying the environmental impacts of gardening activities.
The analysis explores associations with the respondents’ current gardening practices and uses multiple regression to identify the strongest determinants of positive intention to use such a tool.
The findings suggest that affective environmental concern (specifically, worry about climate change and biodiversity loss) is the strongest predictor of intention to use a gardening footprinting tool, along with younger age.
Moreover, many of those most likely to use the tool implement comparatively sustainable gardening practices.
However, this group was also found to have a higher-than-average gardening consumption footprint for plastics, which illustrates a potential mismatch between attitudes and behaviours.
These findings imply footprinting tools require careful design to effectively target potential users (in this case, by tailoring information to address purchasing habits and social group attributes). They also demonstrate a need for alternative approaches (such as campaigns and community initiatives) to influence behaviours in older and/or less environmentally minded gardeners, who are less likely to use environmental footprinting tools.
Nevertheless, some garden design and management choices can have negative impacts.
The decision-making and behaviours of gardeners primarily determine whether gardening outcomes are beneficial.
Hence, there is a need to support gardeners to make choices that benefit human and environmental health, particularly in urban contexts.
Environmental footprinting (providing quantitative measures of anthropogenic environmental impacts), can be used to influence pro-environmental behaviour change.
It can address information-related determinants of environmentally impactful behaviours by providing knowledge, shifting perceptions of risks, and illustrating comparative social norms (comparing an individual’s footprint with the footprints of others). This study uses a nationally representative data set of UK adults to investigate intentions to use a footprinting tool for quantifying the environmental impacts of gardening activities.
The analysis explores associations with the respondents’ current gardening practices and uses multiple regression to identify the strongest determinants of positive intention to use such a tool.
The findings suggest that affective environmental concern (specifically, worry about climate change and biodiversity loss) is the strongest predictor of intention to use a gardening footprinting tool, along with younger age.
Moreover, many of those most likely to use the tool implement comparatively sustainable gardening practices.
However, this group was also found to have a higher-than-average gardening consumption footprint for plastics, which illustrates a potential mismatch between attitudes and behaviours.
These findings imply footprinting tools require careful design to effectively target potential users (in this case, by tailoring information to address purchasing habits and social group attributes). They also demonstrate a need for alternative approaches (such as campaigns and community initiatives) to influence behaviours in older and/or less environmentally minded gardeners, who are less likely to use environmental footprinting tools.
Authors
C. Sutcliffe
Keywords
gardeners, sustainability, motivations, environmental concern, social norms
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