In today’s episode, I talk with environmental and behavioral psychologist, Dr. Karine Lacroix Ph.D, about if a person’s individual eco-friendly behaviors (like riding a bike, composting, or eating less meat) can cannibalize or steer people away from taking actions that might influence bigger systems-wide change (like trying to influence your local Mayor, or meeting with a senator.

Think of it like this. Does directing people reduce their own environmental impact for themselves (just one person) reduce that person’s potential to do actions that might affect other people beyond themselves (many people)?

Does the effort or bandwidth involved with one trade off the other?

Karine focuses on experiments that target the barriers and motivators around climate change behavior and health.

She was a post-doctoral associate at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is now an Advisor to the Behavioral Insights Team (also known as the Nudge Unit or BTI).

We will dive into her recently published paper titled “Does personal climate change mitigation behavior influence collective behavior? Experimental evidence of no spillover in the United States.”
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How to Save the World is a podcast about the psychology of what gets people to do eco-behaviors and take climate action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to rapidly get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.

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