green behavior

What makes us go green? As a behavioral scientist, I am excited to see research that begins to answer this questions. As with most research questions, however, research studies typically provoke more questions than they answer. We don't exactly know why we engage in green behavior, but we are getting an idea of what things might make us behave "more green."

A few things we've learned about what might promote people to recycle:

(1) Being reminded helps a lot.
A study in a university setting showed that just by posting signs to remind individuals to recycle (in proximity to a convenient way to do it), recycling increased by 29%.

(2) If we get feedback on how we're doing, it helps a lot.
In another university setting, as a result of just posting the number of aluminum cans recycled the previous week, recycling increased by 65%.

(3) Making recycling fun can help a LOT.
This is not a published study, but it is definitely my favorite.  Just by making bottle and can recycling a game, this recycling unit was used 100 times in one night compared to a neighboring unit being used 2 times.   http://bit.ly/5kcgKx 

(4) If we think others are doing it, we'll do it too!

A really interesting study conducted in a hotel showed that the little signs asking guests to save water definitely make a difference in promoting towel re-use.  Moreover, a sign telling guests that 75% of the other guests are reusing towels helped even more.  And even more interesting?  A sign telling guests that other guests that stayed in the specific room they were staying in was even more influential.  That's right, for some reason, when the guests knew that other guests that had stayed in their same room were towel re-users, they were more likely to reuse themselves.

As a follow-up, there is a study in progress to evaluate whether individuals will be more inclined to save water and energy if their residential use bills give them the numbers about how much their neighbors are saving.

Humans are interesting animals, aren't we?

Bright Green Future and MoveSD

Last weekend I made it up to the UCSD campus in La Jolla for the afternoon session on the second day of the Bright Green Future Conference. All afternoon speakers from a wide variety of fields gave short, presentations, providing a lot of information and insight in to the current state of the green development in San Diego. For example there was Bill Powers from the Sierra Club's Smart Energy Solutions Campaign who wants to put solar panels on every building for distributed energy production, rather than investing in more costly transmission lines from centralized sources outside the county. Joel Pointon from SDGE discussed how fortunate San Diego is to be the first city in the country to receive Nissan's plug-in electric car, the Leaf, as well as an infrastructure of charging stations to support it. We should also thank Richard V. Anthony for helping to bring us recycling with Zero Waste San Diego, and we should all support him with his next goal of a city wide composting service, COOL2012.

All of the speakers were engaging and together showed the breadth of sustainable initiatives in San Diego, but one in particular that captured my attention was the presentation from Alan Hoffman from Move SD. For the past five years this non-profit has been working to bring quick, effective, and affordable mass transit to San Diego that is collectively referred to as their FAST plan. This is especially appealing to me since I don't own a car. Because it is cheaper, the weather is always perfect, I live in the city, and I'd rather not contribute to a costly and harmful addiction to oil, I either walk, bike, or take the bus to get where I'm going.

So far not owning or driving a car hasn't had much of an impact on my life. Most everything I need is within a couple miles, but there are the occasional trips that remind me why not having a car in San Diego can be such a hassle. Taking the bus from North Park to La Jolla was one of these trips. Two buses and one transfer is not that hard to manage, but the hour and a half spent on those buses compared to what would have been a 20 minute car ride demonstrates the inefficiency of San Diego mass transit. Research from Move SD shows how although currently the trolley lines look great, they do a remarkably poor job of connecting areas of dense residential and commercial.

(http://www.movesandiego.org/pdf/FASTPlanFlyer090416.pdf)

Their vision for San Diego is modeled after Brisbane, Australia which uses dedicated bus roads called quickways to keep the buses out of regular traffic and always moving. Under this model there are fewer transfers, fewer stops (more express routes), and shorter wait times due to high frequency of buses. This network besides being faster than the current bus or trolley system would also be based upon researched commuting patterns, so it would be more accessible , direct, and get people closer to their destinations. Increased public transit efficiency also gets more cars off the road, improving traffic for those still driving. Even more remarkable is that the FAST plan would cost less than what SANDAG's Regional Transportation Plan has already budgeted.

The detail of research and planning Move SD has done on this project may be the most impressive thing about it. They give the impression of almost being ready to simply hand over the blueprints to the city. I hope the city is listening, and that sooner rather than later we can see some implementation of FAST. How long will it take me then to get to UCSD for the next Bright Green Future Conference? I can't say for sure, but I hope it will be enough to convince at least a few more people to leave the car in the driveway.


-Andrew
andrew@olivebranchgbs.com