Efficacy-based and normative interventions for facilitating the diffusion of conservation behavior through social networks

Research suggests that encouraging motivated residents to reach out to others in their social network is an effective strategy for increasing the scale and speed of conservation action adoption. However, little is known about how to effectively encourage large numbers of residents to reach out to others about conservation causes. We examined the influence of normative and efficacy-based messaging at motivating residents to engage in and to encourage others to participate in native plant gardening in their community. To do so, we conducted a field experiment with messages on mailings and tracked native plant vouchers used. Efficacy messages tended to be more effective than normative messages at increasing residents’ willingness to reach out to others to encourage conservation action, as indicated by a several percentage point increase in native plant voucher use by residents’ friends and neighbors. Messages sometimes had different impacts on residents based on past behaviors and perceptions related to native plant gardening. Among these subgroups, efficacy and combined efficacy and norm messages most effectively encouraged individual and collective actions, as indicated by increased voucher usage. Our findings suggest that interventions that build residents’ efficacy for engaging in a conservation behavior and for reaching out to others may be a promising path forward for outreach. However, given our results were significant at a false discovery rate cutoff of 0.25 but not 0.05, more experimental trials are needed to determine the robustness of these trends.     

英语阅读方法和能力的研究与指导

本文试从英语阅读的心理与习惯，对阅读中所遇到的新、生词汇的处理及阅读方法与技巧几个方面来论述，加强学生英语阅读能力及提高学生的综合素质。     

灾害发生时影响居民心理承受能力的社会心理因素分析

目的：探讨影响个体面对自然灾害时心理承受能力的社会心理因素．方法，采用问卷调查的方式，运用因素分析法和相关分析法对1000余名居民进行测评．结果。①个体面对灾害时的心理承受能力的影响因素为。灾害意识、灾时行为、灾害认知、社会支持，②通过相关分析，灾时行为对心理承受能力的影响最大。     

Effectiveness of biodiversity-conservation marketing

Conservation marketing holds potential as a means to engage audiences with biodiversity conservation and help to address the human dimensions of biodiversity loss. Empirical evaluations of conservation marketing indicatives are growing, so we reviewed the literature on this research to inform future directions in the field. We used a systematic search strategy to identify studies that evaluated the effects of conservation marketing interventions (techniques and campaigns) on psychosocial outcomes, categorized as cognitive, affective, or behavioral. Six academic databases (Business Source Complete, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Greenfile, Proquest, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collections), 3 gray-literature databases (BASE, Zenodo, and Google Scholar), and 2 websites (Rare and WildAid) were searched. Articles were subjected to critical appraisal to assess their methodological quality, and data were extracted from each article and analyzed using narrative synthesis. Altogether 28 studies from 26 articles were included in the review. Twenty-five studies were conducted from 2014 through 2016. Methodological quality of most studies was weak (n = 16, 57%) (moderate quality n = 8, 29%; high quality n = 4, 14%). The proportion of studies that evaluated a conservation-marketing technique (e.g., variants of texts, images, or videos) versus a campaign (e.g., community-based campaigns targeting locally relevant issues, such as unsustainable palm oil agriculture, light pollution, or wood fuel fire use) was relatively balanced. Although many studies reported statistically significant results in the intended direction, the utility of findings was limited by persistent methodological limitations, such as a lack of a comparator group, use of non-validated assessment tools, and a focus on self-reported data and subjective outcomes. Conservation marketing is clearly a nascent field of scientific enquiry that warrants further, high-quality research investigations.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

挣扎与妥协:农村家庭缘何陷入能源贫困“陷阱”

生活能源改进是实现农村低收入家庭福利提升的关键环节之一,而资产的贫困为能源的消费造成了约束,使低收入农户难以实现能源的改进以脱离贫困现状。该文借助"贫困陷阱"的定义,将这种受制于资产贫困的能源使用困境称为能源贫困"陷阱",并从农户心理视角考察了低收入家庭更容易陷入能源贫困的原因。基于2015年中国综合社会调查(CGSS)数据,对能源贫困线进行了重新计算,认为我国现阶段农村能源贫困线应为户均600 kgce/a,并发现不论在任何能源贫困线下,收入偏低农户的能源贫困发生率、能源贫困深度和强度均远高于中高收入农户。基于此,该文同时从消费量和消费倾向两个方面估计了家庭经济状况对能源贫困的影响,结果表明:相对于中高收入农户,收入偏低农户的能源消费呈现出"既未省钱又未增效"的非经济理性特征,其能源消费负担实际更重,而消费结构却更为低效。进一步地,运用中介效应模型对这一非经济理性决策进行了解释,考察了心理因素在能源贫困"陷阱"形成中的作用,结果发现:收入偏低农户更容易表现出消极心理状态,负面的情绪和对未来的悲观预期使其在能源决策中更倾向于选择传统能源,而不愿做出能源改进的尝试。这种消极心理在一定程度上反映了收入偏低农户在能源改进中主观能动性的缺乏。正如"扶贫先扶志",政府在推行因地制宜的能源政策、开展能源基础设施建设的同时,也应该加强对贫困农户的情感帮扶,以使其产生尝试改进能源的内生动力。     

Beyond savanna: An evolutionary and environmental psychology approach to behavioral effects of nature scenery in green advertising

Evolutionary psychology has been proposed as an analytic framework for the behavioral effects of landscapes displayed in advertising. In this study, an evolutionary and environmental psychology approach is used to analyze affective reactions to advertising depicting specific natural environments or urban scenes, both prominent ingredients of contemporary advertising imagery. The experimental field study exposed 750 participants at random to one advert of a set of 13 experimental green energy advertisements, each displaying a different biome. Six basic emotional responses (pleasure, arousal, happiness, freedom, safety, and interest) as well as attitude toward the ad and brand attitude were assessed subsequently. Anova and structural equation analysis were used for data analysis. Results of the study confirm the leading opinion on generalized more positive behavioral effects toward visual stimuli representing nature scenes with biospheric contents as opposed to pictures of urban environments or desert settings. In line with earlier empirical research, further findings do not support the hypothesis on an innate preference for savanna landscapes in adults but confirm preferences for images of lush green landscapes with water and familiar biomes. Overall results give significant support to the application of environmental and evolutionary psychology to advertising.     

知识和经验对救援人员实战心理的影响分析

为了解影响救援人员实战心理的关键因素及其作用,采用走访、专家访谈和问卷调查的方法,对我国消防部队的人员组成、心理状况和实战心理进行调查和研究,重点分析消防队员掌握灾害知识和经验积累对实战中出现的恐惧、紧张、急躁等心理的影响。研究结果表明,灾害知识和救援经验的增加对大部分消防队员均能起到消除紧张情绪的作用,知识水平和实战中的紧张与恐惧心理呈现明显的负相关,且影响显著。笔者认为:将救援队伍和人员的灾害知识培训纳入日常工作,对提高救援部队的总体作战能力具有重要作用;对于高级指挥人员,理论知识水平的提高有助于更佳的指挥应对。     

Best Practices in Environmental Communication: A Case Study of Louisiana's Coastal Crisis

This mixed-method case study of environmental communication best practices in Louisiana, USA, identifies trends and approaches as informed by environmental psychology. The results provide key insights for environmental communicators, especially communicators in coastal regions. In-depth interviews with both environmental psychologists and environmental communicators showed that both groups emphasized knowing the audience, telling local stories, building relationships with target audiences and targeted messaging. Both psychologists and communicators also frequently mentioned general messaging concerns of source credibility, avoiding controversial terms and talking about issues, impacts and solutions to which the target audience can relate. A representative survey revealed that Louisiana residents are most interested in hearing about how environmental issues such as climate change, coastal land loss and flooding are affecting their own communities. This finding supports the idea that environmental communicators could do a better job tapping into strong place attachment and sense of community among coastal residents to promote action.