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，不仅要求个人在自己的生活中参与亲环境行为，而且需要说服社交网络中的其他人参与此类行为。鼓励个人招募其他人可以增加社会采取有利于环境的行为的规模和速度。然而，现有的社会科学研究发现，愿意在自己的生活中从事亲环境行为的人往往不愿为环境事业向他人伸出援手。这项研究项目探索如何激励个人招募并与其他人协调环境保护。这项研究的重点是在住宅物业上用本土植物取代草坪的环保行为，以减少用水量，增加本土物种的栖息地。这项研究导致了外展干预措施的创建，这些干预措施可供寻求促进广泛采用亲环境或亲社会行为的组织使用。研究的目标既具有高度的实用性，也有助于基础科学研究：旨在增强自我效能感和规范的干预措施是否会增加个人的招募和协调行为，以促进环境保护。研究小组与柯林斯堡和奥杜邦落基山脉合作，通过野生美化实践，将这一目标应用于改善科罗拉多前线地区城市周边景观的栖息地。研究的第一阶段使用对500多名科罗拉多州居民的调查和访谈来检验特定的假设，这些假设适用于先前关于规范影响和其他背景下的自我效能感的研究；然后，结果被用来设计激励环境保护招募和协调行为的干预措施。第二阶段涉及与研究伙伴合作的两项大规模实地实验，涉及1000多名科罗拉多州居民参加低成本的外展计划，并设置对照，以评估个人参与招募和协调行为的因果影响。研究人员不仅根据感知测量评估效果，还根据合作伙伴组织收集的关于草坪更换的实际招募和协调行为的指标进行评估。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.