WWF Report analyses market approaches to the environment

Citation

(2008), "WWF Report analyses market approaches to the environment", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 19 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/meq.2008.08319eag.001

WWF Report analyses market approaches to the environment

Article Type: News from the net From: Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, Volume 19, Issue 5

WWF has produced a report, which critically reassesses the marketing approaches that are currently advocated as the key to motivating pro-environmental behaviour change. Whilst the authors recognise that key lessons can be learned from this approach, they question its underlying logic that the adoption of “small and painless” behavioural changes for reasons of social status or financial self-interest will set people on a virtuous ladder of ever more far-reaching behavioural changes. Instead, they point to evidence showing that such materialistic values cannot form the basis for motivating more significant pro-environmental behaviour change and that only those individuals who posses a more “inclusive” sense of self identity and who engage in behaviour in pursuit of intrinsic goals (such as personal growth, emotional involvement or community involvement), will be sufficiently motivated to progress up the virtuous ladder of significant pro-environmental behaviour change.

The report advocates the adoption of an approach more analogous to those used in political strategies than marketing campaigns, and sets out eight key recommendations for practical action that environmental organisations could take to engage and activate the values that have underpinned successful responses to the environmental crisis to-date. The report can be downloaded at: www.wwf.org.uk/strategiesforchange