Blog-Lesson 4 (Hubler)
Our lesson last week was applying social psychology to the environment. We were discussing some of the environmental issues facing campuses today and coming up with some intervention strategies to try to help combat such environmental issues. Penn State has made great strides in the fight against environmental issues such as electricity usage and food and landscape waste. “Penn State has reduced its electrical usage by about 7 percent since 2005, avoiding $5 million annually in utility costs. Twenty-two thousand gallons of used cooking oil are refined yearly into fuel for campus vehicles and pieces of equipment. More than 3,000 tons of food and landscaping waste are converted into 1,200 tons of compost” (Pennsylvania State University, (n.d.)).
My fellow classmates came up with a lot of interesting interventions to help with combatting a lot of different environmental issues our campuses face. I personally came up with an intervention strategy for saving on electrical usage by college campuses by implementing the use of more solar panels and solar energy.
Throughout our discussion we learned that within the campus community, the people of the campuses face, what are called, resource dilemmas. Resource dilemmas are situations in which a person must choose between self-interest and the interests of the community or environment (Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M., 2012). I was thinking about this in terms of college campuses and maybe another way to encourage better environmental habits.
Assuming social identity theory could apply because students typically choose a specific university or college to attend and would therefore take pride in belonging to such a community; what if the college or university employed the use of tuition cost incentives to help encourage better habits such as recycling, conserving energy, conserving water and etc. The more money the students save the university or college in environmental expenses by actively engaging in better habits the lower tuition could be to attend that school. The school could also employ a comparison feedback tactic going along with the social comparison theory in where comparing their progress to that of surrounding schools would also help encourage better habits.
This was just an idea I had in continuation with our discussion from our lesson on applying social psychology to the environment. I would love to hear your comments and feedback on whether this strategy sounds feasible or could work in theory, or whether it would be something my fellow students would be interested in looking into!
References:
Pennsylvania State University (n.d.). green.psu.edu. Retrieved online at: sustainability.psu.edu
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1412976381