Pro-environmental Behaviors

Environmental problems are common issues that we humans have to address. We should always behave in an environment-conscious manner and endeavor to reduce environmental loading through our behaviors. Some say the best way to achieve this is to develop machines or facilities that can automatically reduce environmental loading, disregarding environmental consciousness and without any effort on our part. Of course, while it is important to develop environment-friendly machines and facilities, we should always keep in mind that any and all of our activities have some environmental impacts on the Earth. It is our responsibility to act with environmental awareness in sharing the Earth with other living things.
 
Academic studies dealing with pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) are increasing. Multidisciplinary approaches involving social psychology, education, and environmental engineering are also on the rise. However, despite this, each approach is quite individual and a truly holistic view is still lacking. It is difficult to find a good textbook on PEBs that covers not only environmental engineering but also the social psychology behind PEBs. This book starts from a consideration of how we define and categorize PEBs(Chap.1) and offers a holistic viewpoint. It also includes a long list of 200 possible PEBs that can help researchers and students who want to target more PEB options. Chapters2 and 3 deal with the factors influencing PEBs. Chapter2 focuses on barriers and accelerators and Chap.3 summarizes the psychological models for PEBs that have been proposed by various researchers. Chapter4 shows how to survey PEBs and related factors. Here, the basic concepts behind the design of questionnaires and various questioning techniques are discussed. This book covers not only psychological aspects but also engineering approaches, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Chapter 5 looks at methodologies to estimate lifecycle environmental loadings of PEBs in the LCA framework. Finally, for a possible implementation of the theoretical analysis to the real world, several ideas to foster PEBs are given in Chap.6. This book provides students, researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of PEBs. Offering an in-depth introduction to the fundamental concept as well as practical academic tools, it serves as an excellent guide for people new to PEB research.
 

(Written by Kiyo Kurisu, Associate Professor, School of Engineering / 2018)