Have you ever gone to Times Square New York, or Las Vegas, Nevada and thought about how much lights and energy is being used for tourist attraction? Have you ever thought about how much of an impact this has on Earth? Have you ever even thought about how much the things you use have an impact on Earth? Do you unplug things you aren’t using, or take shorter showers to cut down on consumption waste? There are so many questions and so much controversy with topics like this. Let’s take some time to examine the impact that human behavior has on the environment.
Triadic reciprocal determinism, a theory introduced by Albert Bandura states that human behavior is influenced by both personal and environmental factors (Bandura, 1986) An example of this theory is if a news report instructs people to evacuate the city because of a severe hurricane (the environment). Most people will listen and evacuate but some will want to stay and protect their homes (Behavior) (Cardenas, 2016).
The purpose in explaining this is because if people had any idea of how much they were causing harm on the environment which will eventually have an impact on them; would they change their behaviors? Overconsumption of Earth’s resources can result in resource shortages and rises in environmental costs. When resource shortages occur we have to be more cautious of the amounts of resources we are using to make sure they remain available. Resource shortages include but are not limited to, inflation, air and water pollution, and radioactive waste (Cone and Hayes, 1980), (Siero et al., 1996).
There have been many attempts to control overconsumption of Earth’s resources, but without the effort from others not much progress can be made. A lot of companies, schools, and cities invest money in energy consumption projects. How effective are these investment if the students, residents and employees are not using the products appropriately (Siero et al., 1996). As I’m sure you imagined, not very effective. But it is a start.
I think that one of the most effective ways to get people involved in these types of projects is to make them aware. I took an environmental science class two semesters ago where the professor had us find out our ecological footprint. If you would like to measure yours, you can go to http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/
During my time in the class we were also required to do an Earth day project that presented an idea to make people aware of how hard it is to manage damaged resources. Below I will attach photos of my project. The project presented “polluted water” and required participants to purchase tools that would best help them clean the polluted water. Students realized that it is not as easy as a job as they once thought.
To conclude, I think that if people were aware of the harm of overconsumption, they would be more open to changing their behaviors.
Siero, F.W., Bakker, A.B., Dekker, G.B., & van den Burg,M.T.C. (1996). Changing organizational energy consumption behaviour throughcomparative feedback. Journal of Envirionmental Psychology, 16. 235-246.
Dickerson, C.A., Thibodeau, R., Aronson, E., & Miller,D. (1992). Using cognitive dissonance to encourage water conservation. Journalof Applied Social Psychology, 22. 841-854.