Thread by @utterlydavid

Habits die in new environments but a zest for new ones emerges.

Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing
the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment by Bas Verplanken and Deborah Roy

Paper #28 #30papers30days 🧵

As we know, many people *think* about the environment, but fewer take action to safeguard it.

There are many reasons for this: it may make you worse off, better options may not exist where you live.

🌿 This paper explores the role of habit in taking environmental action.

The Habit Discontinuity Hypothesis suggests that when habits are broken, this creates a "window of opportunity for behaviour change"

👩‍🚀 Starting a new job
📍 Moving home
🚧 Roadworks

The discontinuity forces people to renegotiate new ways of doing things.

🔑🏠 The authors recruited 400 people who had recently moved home and 400 who had not moved.

Environmental attitudes were measured (T1) then again 8 weeks later (T2). Both had an intervention to make them greener:

🛍 Environmental Goodie Bag
📰 Newsletter
📙 Green Dictionary

Results.

They found that those who had recently moved were more likely to be reporting green behaviours two months later.

Among the disruption, people become more sensitive to new information, shift to being 'in the mood for change' and ultimately create new habits.

The authors were curious exactly when might be the best moment.

Reminder: 🔴 Before intervention 🟢 After intervention

They conclude that intervening in the first 3 months was most effective, so it's best to make changes as soon after habit discontinuity as possible.

Closing comments.

The authors acknowledge the small effect size. They were asking a lot changing many environmental behaviours at once.

But we now know this works. Combined with other strategies, such as social modelling, cognitive dissonance and goal setting, it'll sing.

Light critique.

GOOD: large heterogeneous sample; tests intervention & non-intervention; proves habit discontinuity works; in field

BAD: reliance on self reported behaviour; vv broad behaviour studied

BETTER IF: study specific habit challenges to determine when most effective

Source.

Verplanken, B., & Roy, D. (2016). Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, 127-134.

PDF: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Big shout out to @PeteJudo for sharing this paper and making the case that Habit Discontinuity is a completely underrated principle that deserves more attention.

Let's add applying it to the bucket list ;)