The Adoption of Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Can Dynamic Norms Explain How Small Scale Change Leads to Large Scale Change?

Counteracting climate change and other environmental problems requires large-scale adoption of pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). However, many PEBs are still minority practices, only being adopted at a small scale. A key question therefore is: How can small-scale PEBs become majority practices? Whereas previous research identified that individuals may adopt behaviours that they perceive others to perform, such descriptive norms may backfire when the desired behaviour is performed by a minority (i.e., weak descriptive norm). We explore what factors determine whether people adopt PEBs despite a weak descriptive norm, focusing on personal environmentalism (i.e., environment self-identity) and perceived trends in society (i.e., dynamic norms), and how these may eventually lead to a strong descriptive norm for PEB. Applied to the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), we test these propositions via an empirically informed agent-based model showing that EV adoption, dynamic and descriptive norms form a dynamic interplay that can explain how EV adoption of a minority can lead to large-scale changes. Limitations and implications will be discussed.