To mitigate climate change and safeguard ecosystems, we need to make drastic changes in our consumption and transport behaviors.
A new IIASA study shows how even minor changes to available infrastructure can trigger tipping points in the collective adoption of sustainable behaviors.
Decades of research in social and ecological psychology, cognitive science, ecology, and cultural evolution has shown that human behavior is influenced by our environments, habits, skills, and attitudes. These behaviors, in turn, alter our environments and can be socially learned and transmitted. It is however less clear how all these processes work together to shape the evolution of sociocultural and socioecological systems. Understanding this is important given that we need radical, systemic change in human behaviors and cultures to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, mitigate climate change, and guard the ecosystems that serve as our life-support systems.
In a new study published in the journal One Earth, IIASA researchers explored how collective behavior patterns emerge systemically as a product of personal, social, and environmental factors. Using an agent-based model – a computational method for simulating interactions between individuals and environments – the study illustrates how personal aspects like attitudes and habits, social networks, and available infrastructure shape the way sustainable behaviors are collectively adopted. The study especially emphasizes the environmental aspect by examining how changes in opportunities to behave sustainably – such as increases in the number of bicycle lanes in a city – affect the adoption of sustainable behaviors like cycling. The researchers used Copenhagen, a city known for its well-developed cycling culture, as a case study. The model was empirically validated by modeling the evolution of cycling and driving patterns in the city.
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