Interventions for Motivating Residents to Recruit and Coordinate with their Neighbors

应对复杂、大规模和快速增长的环境威胁要求个人不仅在自己的生活中采取亲环境行为，而且还要说服他们社交网络中的其他人采取这种行为。激励个人招募其他人可以增加社会采取环保行为的规模和速度。然而，现有的社会科学研究发现，愿意在自己的生活中从事环保行为的人往往不愿意代表环境事业向他人伸出援手。本研究项目探讨如何激励个人招募和协调与他人的环境保护。这项研究的重点是在住宅物业上用本地植物取代草坪，以减少用水量并增加本地物种的栖息地。该研究导致了外展干预措施的创建，可用于组织寻求促进亲环境或亲社会行为的广泛采用。该研究的目的是既高度实用，以及有助于基础科研：是否干预措施，旨在提高自我效能感和规范增加个人的招聘和协调行为，以促进环境保护。研究小组与柯林斯堡市和奥杜邦落基山脉合作，通过野外景观实践，将这一目标应用于改善科罗拉多前山脉城市周边景观的栖息地。第一阶段的研究使用的调查和访谈超过500科罗拉多居民测试特定的假设，适应以前的研究规范的影响和自我效能在其他情况下，然后使用的结果来设计干预措施，激励招聘和协调行为的环境保护。第二阶段涉及与研究伙伴合作的两个大规模实地实验，涉及1000多名科罗拉多州居民的低成本外展计划，控制评估对个人参与招聘和协调行为的因果影响。研究人员评估的效果不仅基于感知的措施，但也对指标，由合作伙伴组织收集的实际招聘和协调行为进行草坪更换。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Addressing complex, large-scale, and rapidly growing environmental threats requires that individuals not only engage in pro-environmental behaviors in their own life, but also convince others in their social networks to engage in such behaviors. Motivating individuals to recruit others can increase the scale and speed at which society adopts a pro-environmental behavior. Existing social science research, however, finds that people who are willing to engage in pro-environmental behavior in their own life are often unwilling to reach out to others on behalf of environmental causes. This research project explores how to motivate individuals to recruit and coordinate with others for environmental conservation. The study focuses on the pro-environmental behavior of replacing grass lawns with native plants on residential properties to reduce water use and increase habitat for native species. The research leads to the creation of outreach interventions that could be used by organizations seeking to promote the widespread adoption of a pro-environmental or pro-social behavior.The objective of the study is both highly practical as well as contributory to basic scientific research: whether interventions designed to enhance perceptions of self-efficacy and norms increase individuals' recruitment and coordination behaviors to promote environmental conservation. The research team partners with the City of Fort Collins and Audubon Rockies to apply this objective to enhancing habitat in peri-urban landscapes in the Colorado Front Range through wildscaping practices. Stage 1 of the research uses surveys and interviews with over 500 Colorado residents to test specific hypotheses adapting prior research on normative influence and self-efficacy in other contexts; the results then are used to design interventions motivating recruitment and coordination behaviors for environmental conservation. Stage 2 involves two large-scale field experiments in collaboration with research partners, involving more than 1000 Coloradan residents in low-cost outreach programs with controls to assess causal impacts on individual engagement in recruitment and coordination behavior. The researchers assess effects based not only on perceptual measures but also on indicators, collected by partner organizations, of actual recruitment and coordination behaviors undertaken for lawn replacements.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.