Making Shift Happen

Designing for Successful Environmental Behavior Change

Nya Van Leuvan author Lauren Highleyman author Rod Fujita author Ashleigh Kellerman author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:New Society Publishers

Published:24th Feb '22

Should be back in stock very soon

Making Shift Happen cover

To tackle our urgent environmental problems and achieve positive, durable change, we must design solutions based directly on how people think, make decisions, and act. Whether you're a practitioner or want to change your own behavior, Making Shift Happen is a roadmap that empowers you with tools to transform the world.

The changemaker's guide to catalyzing environmental behaviour change for a healthy future

To tackle our urgent environmental problems and achieve positive, durable change, we must design solutions based directly on how people think, make decisions, and act.

From hotels that save water and money using simple signage, to energy suppliers that boost participation in renewable energy programs through mere enrollment form tweaks—shifting the behavior of millions for the better is possible.

Based on decades of research into what drives behavior change, Making Shift Happen provides a suite of powerful tools to transform the world. It features A to Z guidance on how to design a behavior change initiative—from choosing the right audience and uncovering what drives their behavior, to designing, prototyping, testing, and implementation.

Clear instructions and real-world examples empower you to apply hundreds of behavioral science solutions including:

  • Using social norms to spread positive environmental behaviors
  • Selecting and testing stories, metaphors, and values to frame information for each audience
  • Catalyzing action by aligning your initiative with your audience's personal and social motivators
  • Breaking bad habits and building positive ones
  • Capturing your audience's attention and reducing barriers to action
  • Connecting people with nature and building empathy for the environment and its inhabitants.

Making Shift Happen is a must-have guide for practitioners in non-profits, governments, and businesses looking to design successful campaigns and initiatives that shift behaviors and mindsets toward positive environmental outcomes and a better future for all.

AWARDS

  • GOLD | 2023 Nautilus Book Awards | Social Sciences & Education
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"This book gives us a gift we have needed for a long time—an engagingly written, scientifically grounded treatment of what specific steps we each can take to combat the specter of climate change and its toxic effects. Count me impressed."
Robert B. Cialdini, author, Influence and Pre-Suasion

"Making Shift Happen brilliantly reveals that the only way to make meaningful progress on complex environmental issues is to understand that they must be addressed as human issues, requiring far more than traditional, facile solutions. I sincerely hope the remarkable wisdom and practical guidance offered here will be embraced"
Steve McCormick, managing director, Draper Richard Kaplan Foundation, former president, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, former president and CEO, The Nature Conservancy

"Completely fascinating—we've learned a lot about the ways minds work in the last decades and that may help us figure out how to appeal to our better angels more effectively than in the past. Rest assured that people who want to sell us junk are paying attention to these insights—the rest of us better do so too!"
Bill McKibben, author, The End of Nature

"Making Shift Happen brings behavioral science alive, weaving research findings with practical examples. The book provides foundations and principles that can be used to advance a sustainable future. It's timely, grounded in behavioral science, and practical."
Wesley Schultz, Professor of Psychological Science, California State University

"A fascinating workshop-in-a-book that takes practitioners through the entire intervention design and implementation process of creating the conditions under which change happens, grows, and endures. Importantly, the self-care of practitioners and their audience is dealt with in some detail, providing evidence-based explanations of the process involved in and the means of securing resilient, long-term engagement in environmental stewardship. After all, burned out people can't heal the planet."
Raymond De Young, professor, Environmental Psychology and Planning, University of Michigan, co-author, The Localization Reader

  • Winner of Nautilus Book Award 2023 (United States)

ISBN: 9780865719484

Dimensions: 225mm x 191mm x 23mm

Weight: 594g

544 pages