Climate Change and Behavior

¶ … Planned Behavior

Sixty-five-year-old Sara shows that she love participation in activities that keep her in an active lifestyle some parts of the year -- in the warm months. It's a wonderful pastime for an older person to work in the garden, be outside, mowing the grass and keeping her yard neat. But because her doctor knows how inactive she is during the cold months, her health is at risk, and clearly, there needs to be a change in her habits and her daily routines.

Theory of Planned Behavior

Icek Ajzen, the person who devised the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), writes that there are three basic kinds of considerations when it comes to human behavior: a) beliefs "about the likely outcomes of the behavior and the evaluations of these outcomes" (these are behavioral beliefs); b) beliefs about "the normative expectations of others and motivation to comply with these expectations" (normative beliefs); and c) beliefs about certain factors that may either "facilitate or impede performance of the behavior and the perceived power of these factors (these are control beliefs) (Ajzen, 2006).

The doctor who looks after Sara's health, in order to get Sara up off that couch -- where she sits locked into television all day in the winter -- needs to bring Sara into his office and counsel her about how she would like to change her behavior to a more active behavior during the cold months. In his office, the doctor has a nurse who was also a teacher, and relates well with Sara. The nurse agrees to conduct pilot work with Sara and they go to lunch and for a walk while the nurse discusses the intervention that the doctor wants to conduct. The first step in the TPB approach is for the nurse to give Sara a description of the behavior that would keep her active in the cold months. Sara's personal accessible beliefs -- perhaps molded by her professional career as a teacher -- show she is very alert, bright, aware of her need to be active.

The second step the nurse takes with Sara is to give her a standard TPB questionnaire. It assesses her behavioral believes, her normative beliefs, and her control beliefs. According to Ajzen, the questionnaire provides a "snapshot" of Sara's "cognitive foundation" -- that is, her attitudes (Ajzen, 3). The intervention to this point shows that Sara (who taught science in middle school) has strong beliefs about the environment, about the need for conservation of natural resources, and about doing her part to preserve the natural world. Sara doesn't need a better attitude, she needs involvement, and walking with her, the nurse delves into Sara's interest in joining a group of seniors who use treadmills and other gym-related exercise devices during winter months.