Mobilising action on climate change and environment: behaviour change

There is a widespread consensus that—if the UK is to meet its climate and environmental goals—we will need to change how we travel, what we eat and buy, and how we use energy at home, including through adopting new technologies and reducing carbon-intensive consumption. Making these changes will bring multiple health, social and economic benefits.

The UK has made welcome progress in reducing emissions through technological innovations and their uptake by industry with little visible impact on the public. This must continue but the Government must also devote much more attention to making it easier for individuals, households and communities to adopt new technologies, change consumption patterns—including by reducing demand—and shift travel modes, if we are to achieve net zero and the UK’s long-term environmental goals.

The Government should focus as a priority on enabling the most impactful behaviour changes that will be needed to meet climate and environmental goals including: adopting ultra-low emission vehicles; installing home insulation and low-carbon heating technologies; taking fewer long-haul flights; changing of diets; and generally reducing carbon and resource-intensive consumption and waste.

Witnesses were clear that the UK’s path to net zero should be a fair one. Everyone will need to make some changes, but higher income households which typically have a larger carbon footprint must take correspondingly larger steps to reduce their emissions.

The barriers to changing behaviour to reduce emissions and environmental impacts and to adapt to climate change vary across the population. Policies will have to address the needs of different households including people on low incomes, people living in rural areas and people with disabilities. We welcome the Minister’s recognition of the importance of affordability in the transition to net zero. The growing cost-of-living crisis strengthens the need for behaviour change policies that support lower-income households.

Fairness should be a central aspect of government policies on behaviour change to meet net zero and long-term environmental goals, including by helping low-income households with costs where appropriate.

The UK public are concerned about climate change and the environment and there is a widespread desire for action to be taken. There are several positive trends such as shifts in diets, purchasing behaviours and the growing uptake of electric vehicles. However, most of us do not know what the most effective actions are that we can take to reduce our emissions and environmental impacts, nor do we appreciate the scale of change that will be needed to reach net zero or adapt to climate change. The appetite of people across the UK for these actions and for the policies needed to enable them is mixed. The public want clear leadership from government and a coordinated approach from government to help them adapt.

The Government must be more open about the changes to behaviour that will be needed to meet the UK’s climate and environmental goals. We call on the Government to develop a public engagement strategy by April 2023 to: (1) communicate and fill the gaps in understanding about the types of changes needed to reach net zero, reduce our environmental footprint and adapt to climate change, and (2) initiate a dialogue with the public about which policies can best enable change and how. Tapping the potential in public concern about climate change and the environment could help accelerate the transition to a greener UK. Conversely a lack of communication and engagement from government risks a delayed and disorderly transition. We offer further recommendations on public engagement in Chapter 8.

Public attitudes towards climate change and the environment have evolved significantly in recent years. There is a rich body of evidence on some aspects of public attitudes and willingness to adopt behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals, but gaps in the data exist. We welcome the Office for National Statistics’ prototype UK Climate Change Statistics Portal , however neither this portal nor the BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker consistently include statistics relating to the key behaviour changes needed to achieve the UK’s climate and environment goals.

The BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker or the Office for National Statistics UK Climate Change Statistics Portal should regularly monitor whether people would like to or are making changes in how they travel, use energy at home and what they eat and buy, and the reasons behind people’s willingness to change.

Our understanding of behaviour change continues to evolve. Across the range of behaviour change theories there are some consistent findings including that human behaviour is motivated by multiple factors, such as knowledge, values, social norms, price, ease and functionality. Several of these factors are structural and contribute to the wider environment within which behaviour takes place.

While some departments refer to behaviour change theories and models, we are not convinced that these are being used routinely and consistently by policymakers when approaching the societal aspects of achieving climate and environmental goals.

Awareness-raising measures, while important, are insufficient to enable behaviour change. Policies and initiatives will need to use multiple levers that focus on the environment within which behaviour takes place and the affordability and availability of products, services and infrastructure.

We call on the Government to develop and publish guidance to inform policy-making on behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals. The guidance should cover the theories, drivers and levers of behaviour change and methods for using behaviour change frameworks in policy design and evaluation. We talk about this and a wider package of proposed guidance in Chapter 9.

Departments from across government should use the full range of policy levers—including regulatory and financial (dis)incentives, the development and adaptation of physical and choice environments, and communication and engagement—to enable changes to the most impactful climate and environmental behaviours.

Successful examples of enabling behaviour change in public health have relied on a package of policy measures. Interventions using solely awareness-raising measures—such as the ‘five-a-day’ fruit and vegetable campaign—have largely failed to deliver sustained behaviour change. The pensions auto-enrolment intervention has been successful because Government shaped the choice environment, rather than relying on individual action or information provision.

The effectiveness of policies aimed at improving public health has historically been undermined by lobbying by parts of the tobacco and food industries. There is a risk that parts of the food and fossil fuel industries, as well as heavy users of fossil fuels, similarly seek to undermine the policies needed to enable behaviour change to meet net zero.

The Government should apply the lessons from successful and unsuccessful attempts to drive behaviour change in other policy fields to its efforts to enable behaviour change to meet the UK’s climate and environmental goals. Key among these lessons is that coherent packages of policy measures must be deployed to enable the most impactful behaviour changes that will be needed. Measures should also be put in place to ensure the effectiveness of policies is not undermined by corporate lobbying.

The COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the virus brought about huge changes to everyday life across the population. The individual’s choice environment was changed, and people had to form new habits and routines to adapt to the changing circumstances. We recognise that the changes demanded by the pandemic were seen as a short-term response to a short-term emergency, nevertheless, as we emerge from the pandemic, the Government has an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned about behaviour change from COVID-19 and consider applying such lessons to wider policy contexts.

The Government should seize the opportunity to evaluate behaviour change which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the theory, drivers, and levers behind the changes, with a view to applying lessons learned to other critical policy areas, including climate change and the environment. The evaluation should include an assessment of the effectiveness of principles behind COVID-19 behaviour change interventions, such as open information, clear messaging about personal action, delivery of messages by both politicians and scientists, clarity about the role of government in relation to the role of individual action, and the use of an independent advisory structure through SAGE and SPI-B. The evaluation of lessons learned from behaviour change during the pandemic should be included in the package of guidance for departments working on policy development and implementation, which we discuss further in Chapters 8 and 9.

Community groups, charities and faith groups are delivering reductions in emissions and environmental impacts and adaptation in communities across the UK, often while responding to other local needs. While behaviour change on the scale needed to meet the UK’s climate and environmental goals requires action from the Government and other organisations, community-level behaviour change can make an important contribution

The Government should take a holistic view of the benefits of climate and environmental activities delivered by community groups, charities and faith groups and recognise and celebrate the life-enhancing change they achieve. Government policies should harness the many contributions of civil society and seek to unblock the challenges they face.

Local government bodies are in a central position to deliver change through place-based solutions due to their proximity to individuals, households and communities and their ability to work with civil society and to tailor interventions to specific groups. However, despite many brilliant examples of local government bodies supporting residents and communities to reduce emissions and environmental impacts, and a desire from many to do more, they often lack the necessary funding and staffing and face many other pressures. The absence of consistent policies and communications from central government also hinders their ability to deliver change.

The Government should use the Net Zero Forum announced in the Net Zero Strategy to work through the challenges faced by local government in delivering behaviour change interventions—including insufficient funding and resources—and ensure the forum meets local government’s expectations for a more collaborative and joined-up relationship with central government.

Businesses have a key role to play in enabling behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals, including through increasing the affordability and availability of products and services with lower climate and environmental impacts and by engaging their customers and employees. Many businesses are keen to take on this role and there are some excellent ongoing initiatives led by businesses, but challenges arising from the policy and regulatory environment are constraining efforts.

The Government must provide clear, consistent and sustained policy signals to stimulate investment and innovation. To this end the Government should set dates for banning the use of technologies with the highest emissions and environmental impacts where suitable alternatives exist or are foreseeable, where appropriate with a phased programme. For technologies where there is clear evidence on feasible alternatives, dates for final bans and milestones should be set within the next 12 months. The Government should gather and review evidence regarding the other most carbon and resource intensive technologies on a continuous basis going forward. The Government should also strengthen product standards, as we go on to discuss in Chapter 7.

The Government should step up its strategic engagement at a senior level with businesses operating in the key behaviour change areas—personal travel, food, energy use at home and consumer goods retail—with a focus on developing sectoral action plans to increase the availability and affordability of green products and services in line with climate and environmental goals.

Greater action should be taken to ensure that businesses who offer products and services with lower climate and environmental impacts can compete on a level playing field. Over the next 12 months, the Government should conduct a review of regulatory barriers faced by businesses seeking to offer products and services with these characteristics in the key behaviour change areas and set out an action plan for addressing those barriers.

We welcome the Scottish and Welsh governments’ acknowledgements that reaching net zero will require significant changes to behaviour and the efforts of Northern Ireland’s Department for Agriculture, Environment & Rural Affairs to pursue climate and environment behaviour change initiatives. The Scottish Government’s embedding of the Individual, Social and Material Tool in policy-making and Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change, and the Welsh Government’s commitment to produce a Public Behavioural Change Engagement Strategy, are very positive steps.

The Government should make an assessment of the devolved governments’ strategies and initiatives with a view to replicating the most effective elements in the public engagement strategy which we recommended in Chapter 3 and discuss further in Chapter 8.

Transport, including personal travel, makes the largest contribution to emissions. We welcome the Government’s focus on the rollout of low-emissions vehicles—including through phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars—and its efforts to improve active travel infrastructure and local public transport systems. It is critical that these efforts deliver easier, safer and more accessible walking and cycling routes and remove barriers to public transport use if we are to achieve the behaviour change in travel needed to meet the UK’s climate and environmental goals.

The Government must deliver on its ambition to improve active travel infrastructure and local public transport systems by providing the necessary resources and supporting local government bodies to implement projects on the ground. The upcoming Transport and Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bills should be used to ensure local government bodies have the necessary powers to prioritise active travel and local public transport—including in new developments. The cost-benefit assessment process for transport projects should be revised to give greater weight to reducing emissions.

The Government’s failure to acknowledge the need for a reduction in long-haul flights is misplaced given the meaningful contribution this could make to emissions reductions as well as the public’s support for a fair measure that would help to secure this.

The Government should launch a call for evidence on introducing a frequent flyer levy applied to long-haul flights. We note that, by design, proposed frequent flyer levies only affect the minority of the population who take flights much more often than the average individual or family.

Given the emissions reductions and environmental improvements that could be achieved through partially reducing meat and dairy consumption, we are disappointed that the Net Zero Strategy neglected to mention the climate and environmental benefits of dietary change and the Government food strategy failed to put forward a related target.

Alongside a partial reduction in meat and dairy consumption, a shift towards certain types of meat, including pasture fed meat, dairy and other foods produced by sustainable production methods would contribute to achieving climate and environmental goals. Systematic interventions are needed to increase the availability and uptake of food with lower climate and environmental impacts.

We welcome the Government’s commitments in the Government food strategy to consult on making Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services (GBSF) mandatory across the public sector and on introducing a target for at least 50 per cent of food spend to be on food produced locally or certified to higher environmental standards.

The Government should seek to increase the availability of food with lower climate and environmental impacts by: Delivering on its commitment to develop a system of agricultural support—via an effective and expedited rollout of ELMS and other environmental schemes—which supports farmers and land managers to reduce emissions and enhance the natural environment. Negotiating trade deals which ensure imported food products placed on the Great Britain market meet the same climate and environmental standards required of domestic producers. Utilising public health policy tools, including updating the Eatwell Guide to reflect a diet that is compatible with the UK’s long-term climate and environmental goals and aligning with this the GBSF, which we support making mandatory across the public sector.

There is limited public awareness of the emissions and environmental impacts of different types of food—including more and less sustainable meat and dairy production methods—not least because information is largely unavailable or inaccessible to consumers. In light of this, we welcome the Government’s commitments in the Government food strategy to launch a Food Data Transparency Programme, including a proposed mandatory methodology for eco labels and sustainability claims.

The Government should seek to make information regarding the environmental impacts of different food products more accessible by: Taking steps to ensure that public communications and information on diets convey the range of health, climate and environment benefits that dietary change—including meat and dairy consumption in line with an updated Eatwell Guide—can achieve. Implementing the Food Data Transparency Programme and public sustainability reporting by companies in the food sector in a timely manner. Urgently consulting on the mandatory methodology for eco labels and sustainability claims, which we go on to discuss further later in this chapter.

While taxes are often effective at changing behaviour and it may ultimately be necessary to use taxes in this area, it is not the right moment to introduce a tax on emissions associated with household products like food. Such a tax could be regressive—impacting on lower income households more severely during a cost-of-living crisis—and could undermine public support for the UK’s climate and environmental goals. When future governments consider such a measure, eliminating regressive impacts through policy design should be a priority.

Insulating homes could deliver emissions reductions, help reduce household energy bills and improve energy security, but without greater government support comprehensive home insulation remains out of reach for many households who are being affected acutely by the cost-of-living crisis. Without improved insulation, the Government’s heat pump installation targets are also at risk as homes must be well-insulated for heat pumps to work effectively.

The uptake of energy efficiency improvements and low-carbon heating is being constrained by their upfront costs and the insufficiency of government support. While we welcome the Government’s efforts to support heat pump installations and unit cost reductions, heat pumps are not appropriate for all homes and their cost remains a barrier. Households must be supported financially, through better information and through straight-forward installation processes. While we welcome the Government’s new energy advice service, it is unclear that it will provide the level of support needed.

The Government should coordinate a national drive to improve the energy efficiency of our homes, including by amending the Energy Security Bill to introduce a support package to help households with installation costs. The Government should expand its energy advice service to include a facility whereby a dedicated contact person supports households throughout the process of installing energy efficiency measures and low carbon heating technologies. We comment further on the communications aspect of the advice service in Chapter 8.

The Future Homes Standard will strengthen building standards for energy efficiency and emissions performance from 2025 but homes are currently being built to existing standards, which have weaknesses and are not well-enforced. This is resulting in missed energy savings and emissions reductions and costly processes of retrofitting for home-buyers. It is also a missed opportunity to create a social norm of environments that support low-carbon behaviours.

The Government should review the Future Homes Standard timetable and bring forward further interim measures to strengthen energy efficiency standards for new homes as a matter of urgency, as well as taking steps to improve the enforcement of current standards.

As noted above, we welcome the Government’s commitment in the Government food strategy to develop a mandatory methodology for food and drink eco labels and sustainability claims. This has the potential to drive producers and retailers to improve the sustainability of products on offer to consumers.

The Government should urgently consult on and then launch the mandatory methodology for food eco labels and sustainability claims.

Product standards could be used to a greater extent to drive up the sustainability of products and services available in a manner consistent with the Government’s goal of making it easier, clearer and cheaper for consumers to make green choices.

The Government should accelerate the development of low carbon product standards referred to in the Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy and review the role enhanced product standards for other sustainability characteristics could play in the most resource-intensive consumer goods sectors. It should also accelerate labelling proposals put forward in the same strategy and review the role enhanced eco-labelling could play in consumer goods sectors where current frameworks do not cover the key climate and environmental impacts.

The Government’s work on Extended Producer Responsibility is welcome and could support less resource-intensive consumption. However, progress has been disappointingly slow in developing proposals originally announced in 2018.

The Government should develop Extended Producer Responsibility schemes, including for textiles and electronics, with much greater urgency.

While communications on their own are insufficient to facilitate the behaviour change needed to meet the UK’s climate and environmental goals, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that clear, well-resourced public communications play an important role in increasing public understanding of the challenges we face collectively and the actions we can all take to address these.

Guidance published by the Government Communication Service titled The Principles of Behaviour Change Communications provides a basis for communicators across government to consider behavioural science in designing communications campaigns, but there is no similar guidance specifically designed for behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals.

As part of the proposed package of guidance we referred to in Chapters 4 and 5, we call on the Government to develop and publish guidance for departments to inform their communications strategies on behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals. The guidance document could draw on the Government Communication Service’s guidance, the Principles of Behaviour Change Communications, and apply the principles in the context of meeting climate and environmental goals.

The Government’s new energy advice service signifies a positive step; we hope that it will provide clear signposting and actionable advice to consumers and, as set out in Chapter 7, we hope it will be expanded. However, the service addresses only one issue: energy efficiency. A broader communications campaign to address other issues in this space—such as how we travel and what we eat—is urgently required. This campaign, as part of the public engagement strategy we recommend in Chapter 3, should communicate the need for change and help to develop a shared positive vision; provide the public with the information needed to make green choices; shift social norms; develop policies collaboratively and engender support for the changes that will be needed to reach net zero and achieve the UK’s environmental goals.

As part of the public engagement strategy that we call for in Chapter 3 by April 2023, the Government should: Provide clear, consistent and actionable information that enables the public to make informed choices about how we travel, what we eat and buy, and how we heat our homes; Develop positive messaging which emphasises the co-benefits of changes and uses stories about individuals already making changes; Work through trusted sources such as scientists and community leaders; and Tailor messaging to specific audiences to ensure it is effective and inclusive.

We recommend the Government significantly scale up its spending on public communications campaigns to reflect the scale of the challenges we face arising from climate change and environmental damage. Communications on behaviour change for climate and environmental goals should be prioritised in the Government Communications Plan for 2022—2023.

The Government should develop a monitoring process to evaluate the effectiveness of the new energy advice service to ensure that lessons can be learnt from the initiative for future behaviour change interventions.

There is great potential to normalise behaviours associated with reduced greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts—including public transport use and active travel—through positive representations in broadcast television, advertising and on social media. However, at present aspects of the media environment run in a contrary direction, for example the proportion of advertising devoted to SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicles) and disinformation and misinformation on climate change available on social media.

Despite welcome improvements in guidance for businesses around misleading environmental claims, more could be done to counter greenwashing, build consumer trust and ensure companies who market products and services associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts can compete fairly.

The Government should introduce measures to regulate advertising of high-carbon and environmentally damaging products. We were persuaded by arguments made by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). As a priority, the Government should create standardised definitions of commonly used environmental terms to which businesses must adhere in marketing and labelling their products, and add misleading and/or unsubstantiated environmental claims to the list of banned practices under consumer law.

The Government should assess the ways that misinformation and disinformation about climate change and the environment online can be challenged.

We were heartened to hear the positive experiences of participants in the UK Climate Assembly and commend this use of deliberative engagement, though we are concerned that the Government may not have taken the Climate Assembly’s report findings seriously. Citizens’ assemblies and other forms of public engagement, such as those tailored to young people, will play a significant role in supporting behaviour change for climate and environmental goals. Engaging the public and strengthening understanding in this space will improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of behaviour change interventions.

As part of the public engagement strategy that we have called for, the Government should embed deliberative methods, such as citizens assemblies, in climate change and environment policy design from local to national levels to shape a shared vision of net zero and environmental sustainability. In the public engagement strategy, the Government should include specific methods to engage young people, through mechanisms such as social media campaigns, young citizens’ assemblies and youth advisory panels.

We strongly welcome the inclusion of environmental and sustainability issues in the syllabus of the forthcoming Natural History GCSE. However, there is also a need for young people to be educated about the science of climate change and actions they can take to support meeting climate and environmental goals, which must be embedded across the curriculum.

The Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy should be reviewed to ensure every opportunity has been taken through both formal and informal education and communications and the school environment to provide young people with the knowledge and skills to make life and career choices to support environmental and climate goals.

We have not found the Government’s current approach to enabling behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals to be adequate to meet the scale of the challenge.

Of the six principles underpinning green choices outlined in its own Net Zero Strategy, the Government has failed to implement 5 and 6: to motivate and build public acceptability for major changes and to present a clear vision of how we will get to net zero and what the role of people and business will be. Nor has the Government consistently applied across the key areas where people and businesses will need to change behaviours to meet net zero and environmental goals the remaining four principles—of sending clear regulatory signals, making the green choice the easiest, making the green choice affordable and empowering people and businesses to make their own choice.

The one element of consistency in departments’ approaches to delivering the Net Zero Strategy—the principle of going with the grain of consumer choice—ignores the role that many government levers like regulation and taxation play in shaping markets and influencing social norms.

The Government’s failure to date to put in place sufficient policies, resources and communications to enable change risks missing statutory climate targets and opportunities to improve health and wellbeing.

The public expect the Government to take a leadership role to enable behaviour change, but the Government’s reticence to address key areas—such as what people eat, how we heat our homes, what we buy and how we travel—which is largely a result of a reluctance to be perceived as reducing freedom of choice, undermines individuals’ willingness and ability to take action.

The Government is excessively reliant on large-scale and as yet undeveloped technologies to meet net zero targets. The evidence shows that the public expect leadership from the Government and can accept measures to adapt their behaviour to more sustainable patterns and reduced carbon-intensive consumption, as well as to adopt existing green technologies, if communicated clearly and properly supported.

The Government should apply behavioural science to all its policies and initiatives. It should urgently review the Net Zero Strategy and policies and initiatives in place to deliver it and rectify where its six principles underpinning green choices are not being delivered.

As we note in Chapters 3 and 8, the Government should introduce a public engagement strategy to build support for helping people adopt new technologies and reduce carbon-intensive consumption in key areas where behaviour change is required. Net zero cannot be achieved without addressing both.

Inconsistency in policies owned by different parts of government inhibits the ability and likelihood of behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals. The use of upstream measures including regulation, taxation and development of infrastructure, appropriately sequenced, are key and require the input of, and coordination across, various departments. Moreover, policies in different departments are maintaining high carbon lifestyles and undermining the public’s willingness to change behaviours. The evidence we gathered from departments revealed poor coordination of policies across departments and poor implementation of sequenced policies within departments.

We welcome the introduction of a Minister of State for Climate. The Government should ensure that the Minister has sufficient resources, and their role should include coordinating, sequencing and monitoring behaviour change policy across departments.

The Government should increase transparency in the proceedings of the two climate-focused Cabinet Committees—the Climate Action Strategy Committee and the Climate Action Implementation Committee—to enable greater scrutiny of cross-government coordination of behaviour change for climate and environmental goals.

The evidence gathered for this inquiry suggests there is no central resource from which departments can seek expertise on behaviour change for climate and the environment. Similarly, there are differing levels of expertise across relevant departments, there is no mechanism for coordinating and retaining expertise across departments, and no clear mechanisms exist for evaluation and learning lessons. The evidence gathered suggests this is partly because there is not enough behavioural science expertise both centrally and across departments.

The Government should strengthen an existing team or create a new unit to provide advice and coordination on behaviour change for climate and environmental goals across departments and take steps to increase and standardise the expertise held across all relevant departments. The Government should seek to equip staff working centrally and across departments with behaviour change expertise.

A package of guidance—which we have referred to in Chapters 4, 5 and 8—would strengthen the Government’s leadership on behaviour change for climate and environmental goals, improve coordination between and consistency across departments and provide a central resource for actors on different levels, such as local authorities, civil society and businesses. The guidance should be owned by the Cabinet Office, developed closely with BEIS and Defra, and should have similar status to other manuals for policymakers, such as the Open Policy Making toolkit. The guidance should include: A toolkit for designing, delivering and evaluating policy to enable behaviour change for climate and environmental goals; A consistent framework for working with other actors—such as civil society, local authorities and businesses—in the development and delivery of policies for behaviour change to meet climate and environmental goals; Information on the machinery of Government related to behaviour change for climate and environment, including all groups and committees working in the policy area and their remits; An evaluation process for appraising the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions for climate and environmental goals; and Lessons learned from behaviour change interventions for climate and environmental goals across government.

There is limited upstream coordination of, and information provision to, other actors working on behaviour change for climate and environmental goals across different levels—including civil society, businesses and local authorities. This is further hampered by a failure of the Government to publish a public engagement strategy identifying how and who can enable behaviour change for climate and environmental goals.

The public engagement strategy which we are calling for should make clear that delivery of net zero is a shared task between government, businesses, local authorities, civil society and individuals and establish what role each actor has to play in delivering net zero.