Making Shift Happen: Designing for Successful Environmental Behavior Change

(Paperback)

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The changemaker's guide to catalysing environmental behaviour change for a healthy future.

To tackle our urgent environmental problems and achieve positive, durable change, we must design solutions based directly on how people think, make decisions, and act.

From hotels that save water and money using simple signage, to energy suppliers that boost participation in renewable energy programs through mere enrolment form tweaks shifting the behaviour of millions for the better is possible.

Based on decades of research into what drives behaviour change, Making Shift Happen provides a suite of powerful tools to transform the world. It features A to Z guidance on how to design a behaviour change initiative from choosing the right audience and uncovering what drives their behaviour, to designing, prototyping, testing, and implementation.

Clear instructions and real-world examples empower you to apply hundreds of behavioural science solutions including:

• Using social norms to spread positive environmental behaviours
• Selecting and testing stories, metaphors, and values to frame information for each audience
• Catalysing action by aligning your initiative with your audience's personal and social motivators
• Breaking bad habits and building positive ones
• Capturing your audience's attention and reducing barriers to action
• Connecting people with nature and building empathy for the environment and its inhabitants.

Making Shift Happen is a must-have guide for practitioners in non-profits, governments, and businesses looking to design successful campaigns and initiatives that shift behaviours and mindsets toward positive environmental outcomes and a better future for all.

Reviews

"This book gives us a gift we have needed for a long timean engagingly written, scientifically grounded treatment of what specific steps we each can take to combat the specter of climate change and its toxic effects. Count me impressed."
Robert B. Cialdini, author, Influence and Pre-Suasion

"Making Shift Happen brilliantly reveals that the only way to make meaningful progress on complex environmental issues is to understand that they must be addressed as human issues, requiring far more than traditional, facile solutions. I sincerely hope the remarkable wisdom and practical guidance offered here will be embraced"
Steve McCormick, managing director, Draper Richard Kaplan Foundation, former president, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, former president and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

"Completely fascinatingwe've learned a lot about the ways minds work in the last decades and that may help us figure out how to appeal to our better angels more effectively than in the past. Rest assured that people who want to sell us junk are paying attention to these insightsthe rest of us better do so too!"
Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature

"Making Shift Happen brings behavioral science alive, weaving research findings with practical examples. The book provides foundations and principles that can be used to advance a sustainable future. It's timely, grounded in behavioral science, and practical."
Wesley Schultz, Professor of Psychological Science, California State University

"A fascinating workshop-in-a-book that takes practitioners through the entire intervention design and implementation process of creating the conditions under which change happens, grows, and endures. Importantly, the self-care of practitioners and their audience is dealt with in some detail, providing evidence-based explanations of the process involved in and the means of securing resilient, long-term engagement in environmental stewardship. After all, burned out people can't heal the planet."
Raymond De Young, professor, Environmental Psychology and Planning, University of Michigan, co-author, The Localization Reader

Author Bio

Nya Van Leuvan, MA, is a leader in designing and executing programs that accelerate social change by shifting human behavior. She co-founded and directs the not-for-profit Root Solutions to increase the effectiveness of conservation advocacy and policymaking through the use of behavior change, design thinking, and systems thinking. She holds an MA from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She's from San Francisco, California.

Lauren Highleyman, MS, is a communications and behavior change strategist with experience designing and implementing effective and engaging initiatives across a variety of environmental issue areas. She is passionate about applying insights from the social and behavioral sciences to inspire action and strengthen collaboration among diverse environmental stakeholders. She holds an MS in Natural Resources and Environment with a focus in Environmental Behavior, Education and Communication from the University of Michigan and a BA from UC San Diego. She lives in Marin County, CA.

Rod Fujita, PhD, is a leader in the theory and practice of aligning incentives with good conservation outcomes. He co-founded Root Solutions and is the Director of Research and Development at Environmental Defense Fund's Oceans Program, where he has been working to improve fisheries for more than 30 years. Rod has served on numerous state, regional, federal, and international advisory bodies and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, as well as many popular articles and the well-received book, Heal the Ocean. He lives in Oakland, California.

Ashleigh Kellerman is a Senior Associate at Root Solutions, where she focuses on framing for improved environmental communication and behavior change. An alumna of UC Berkeley with a background in psychology and economics, she has dedicated her career to shifting the frames, narratives, metaphors and values that underpin many of the world's most pressing social issues. She lives in Berkeley, California.