From Your Frontyard to the Block: Pathways to Widespread Pro- Environmental Change

Addressing climate change requires collective behavior change. Yet a gap exists between widespread concern and meaningful action. Despite pro-environmental convictions, many are slow to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and avoid conversations about environmental issues. This thesis proposes that a feedback loop fueled by “social norm misperceptions” perpetuates this gap. People underestimate others' pro-environmental convictions, as environmentally harmful behaviors—like people taking cars to cover short distances or booking short-haul flights—are more visible than pro-environmental behaviors, creating a false impression that others do not care about climate change. This misperception discourages people from acting themselves and reinforces the feedback loop in which environmentally harmful behaviors remain the norm.

This thesis, however, argues that social norms can also be part of the solution. It demonstrates that correcting norm misperceptions through interventions that reveal pre-existing pro-environmental convictions and behavior can shift perceptions of what is normal, propelling widespread pro-environmental change. I develop this idea through a literature review, agent-based simulations, online experiments, and a real-world experiment in the context of neighborhoods. Together, these studies offer a framework for designing interventions that seed new social norms that drive widespread pro-environmental change.