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(C) 2014 Kerstin Böck

maNature

The missing gap

Motivating a “behavioural change” is often a major goal of governance strategies, public policies, private initiatives, or marketing strategies. In some respect the boarders to “manipulating” peoples behaviour are fluent. However, research focusing on revealing drivers and barriers of behavioural change is aiming to understand how a modification of peoples behaviour can be achieved. In this context, research on different types of Human-Nature Relationship offers a wide range of explanatory value, assuming that different patterns of this relationship are present in each person, and that activating a specific pattern leads to a certain behaviour.

The primary goal of the module 'maNature’ was to test this theory in an experimental design, which initially was not communicated to the participants. For this, the audience was divided into two groups. Both groups should discuss agriculture and climate change based on introductory texts, which emphasised different aspects of the topic: one group was given a text and pictures assigned to the so-called Master type (mankind stands above nature and can control nature) whereas the text and pictures for the other group could be more attributed to the partner/participant types (mankind and nature are equally important and humans treat nature as a partner). The intention behind these different introductory texts was to trigger different patterns of Human-Nature relationship in the participants, which should result in different discussions and outcomes in the two groups. In order to make these differences visible, participants were asked to note down three aspects of agriculture and climate change that came to their mind after the ‘priming’. These aspects are depicted in the word clouds.
  Additionally, the participants in each group discussed policy measures that could be implemented in order to face challenges related to agriculture and climate change. Finally, the outcomes of both groups were presented in a ‘press conference’. Differences in the policy recommendations were discussed to explore how the experimental setting influenced the output of both groups.

dokNE-projects in the context of this module:
  • Transition towards sustainable energy behaviour - a comparative analysis of individual and collective engagement in photovoltaics (Michael Braito)
  • Implementation and evaluation of measures aimed at integrating aspects of sustain ability into pig fattening (Katharina Schodl)
  • The impact of farmers individual behaviour on the provision of environmentally sound production methods (Peter Walder)

Michael Braito, Marianne Penker, Katharina Schodl, Peter Walder, Christoph Winckler.
2014

Guests involved:

Christian Baumgartner (Naturfreunde International), Rodrigo Lozano (Corporate Sustainability, University Utrecht), Christian Pohl (Transdisciplinarity, ETH Zurich), Michael Proschek-Hauptman (Umweltdachverband)























Fact Box

maNature
Part of
Date
June 23, 2014