CPT737: Sustainability in PracticeLecture 3

Rational choice theory and the ‘value action gap’

Richard Cowell, cowellrj@cf.ac.uk,Room 2.74, ext. 76684

Rational choice theory:

• RCT is a bundle of tools that seek to explain large-scale social phenomena (provision of public goods, collective action) on the assumption that individual act in a consistent way according to some assessment of costs and benefits

• Best example of application to environment as a ‘public good’ is Hardin’s tragedy of the commons

Evolution of RCT:

• Looking beyond material costs and benefits, to non-material benefits (solidarity benefits, expressive benefits)

• Applied by Rydin and Pennington to collective, political action, to explain why people act, with some issues, but ‘free ride’ with others

• They looked at incentive structures offered by certain kinds of issues and groups: green space, air quality, beaches, and role of local media

Issues with RCT:

• Helps begin to explain why expressed values may not match actions, but …

• Is our behaviour really always self-interested (and if our behaviour can always be described as ‘rational’, does ‘rationality’ mean anything?)

• Issues with the assumptions (i) about rationality (what about relatively unreflective behaviour?) and (ii) where our sense of ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ come from

Eurobarometer survey

• Please complete the attached survey• Reflect on the methodology: difficulties

in answering; validity of the findings

What patterns can you find within and between countries?

What does it show about actual behaviour?

Blake’s analysis of the value-action gap

• Looked at UK Government’s 1990s ‘Going for Green’ initiative

• Mass media awareness-raising campaign, including five point green code: ‘cut down waste’; save energy and natural resources’; ‘travel sensibly’; ‘prevent pollution’ and ‘look after the local environment’

• Used qualitative interviews to understand people’s responses

Why do you think there might be this gap?

Explaining the gap• Information issues, and the poverty of the

‘information deficit model’ used by Government

• Practical issues, like time, resources, space and facilities

• Attitudinal issues, concerning lifestyles, allocation of responsibility, efficacy and trust

• So, says Blake, we need to be more sensitive to context in which information is consumed, interpreted, and which shapes responses

‘Green architecture’ (Horton)• Connecting identity and structural conditions

• Horton emphasises need to understand material aspects of culture, rather than purely psychological ‘attitudes’

• He looked at objects, places, times involved in maintaining green activist identities in Lancaster – people ‘perform’ green identity through these spaces, which keeps them in line with a ‘green script’

• A ‘green architecture’ would be about creating things, times, spaces to make it easier to live a green lifestyle