How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior

You need to tell the world why your idea or mission matters – and not just in any way. You need to tell a story that deeply resonates so that people will fund you, work with you, and take action to support you. In this episode, I talk through the power of using The Hero's Journey template to tell your non-fiction story – and how discovering this twelve-step structure dramatically changed the course of not just my environmental work,  but my life, and how it might change yours, too.

See the article and free downloadable story template How to Tell a Story that Changes the World

Get the book, Resonate, by Nancy Duarte https://amzn.to/3qGuwkm 

Get The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell https://amzn.to/3dCOmrz

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How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

People come to me with all sorts of elaborate ideas to "change the world," like games, festivals, art projects, films, and apps.

Often, these ideas have little connection to how the idea will make a real change happen on the ground once people have "experienced" the idea . . . (i.e. "I suppose we'll just put a link somewhere, then people will . . . ")

This entrepreneurship model is back-to-front. If you have an idea to make an impact, you need to forget your crazy idea and go straight to a real human being and get them to make the change you are hoping your idea will influence them to make. Talk to ten people on your street. Call every person you went to school with. Talk to your dad's golf buddies. Get them to do a real thing and observe what it takes.

I'm calling it the ACTION DESIGN THRESHOLD. Pass it before you write any code or spend any money - or before you even have an idea at all. Use Slack, Google lists, Zoom, Instagram, Canva, Figma, and Discord. Do it using your own email and your own phone number.

Just get a real human to do a real thing in the real world. You can do it with a conversation, a party, a poster, or a sticker. Create a 21-day challenge. Offer free consulting calls. Start a group. Just get out there and practice making change happen by talking to a human in real life.

Once you've succeeded in getting your first real human to do the action, then try and replicate it with two humans. Then try and get ten humans to do it.

What will it take to scale your actions from ten humans to 100 humans? Look for a pattern and an opportunity. What kind of actions do you need to design this scaling for? This is your idea that will work.

Any idea you have before you get ten real humans to change is probably a junk idea. At the least, it will need much pivoting. And if you can't get ten people to make a change from a conversation with you and any simple tools you give them, or you don't have the networking and marketing skills to find these ten humans, there's no way your idea will fly in a theoretical future when you have millions in funding.

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How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based techniques you can use to get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Join my climate action design masterclass training for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Do you ever hear animals you never see? Secretive and rare animals, such as Eastern bristlebirds, can be most easily found by the sounds that they make. We can only do this, however, if we learn how to decipher their calls! 

In her PhD research, Jessie is exploring how to design future technologies that support people in becoming familiar with identifying bird calls from audio recordings. Birders and members of the public explored Jessie’s research prototypes, such as the Bristle Whistle Challenge. Conservationists and members of the public are likely to benefit from having enticing tools that include creative playful and task-oriented gameful interactions with bird calls. Such tools may support many people, whether learning calls for fun, or to support citizen science, ecology, or wildlife conservation efforts.

Jessie mentions these apps:

Fold IT - Protein folding game https://fold.it/

Zooniverse - https://www.zooniverse.org/

Rorshak ink blot test - http://rorschachinkblottest.com/

e-Bird app - https://ebird.org/about/ebird-mobile/

Frog ID - https://www.frogid.net.au/

I-Naturalist - https://www.inaturalist.org/

Otter-AI - https://otter.ai/

Cornel Lab of bird sounds - https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

Xeno Canto bird sounds - https://xeno-canto.org/

Cat Tracker - https://cattracker.org/cat-tracker/

Eco-Acoustics Researcher, Bernie Krause https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernie-Krause

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How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Does your website, pitch deck, and marketing material ACTUALLY explain what you do, clearly? Or is it a confusing word salad of environmental world-saving generalities? Remember this phrase: "If you confuse, you lose." In my experience, most climate and environmental projects struggle to simply explain what they do. In this episode, I explain how to write a "power sentence" in three easy steps so anyone can immediately "get it."

You need to follow the steps to write this power sentence because clarity is what creates the emotional connection with your audience. It's what will get people to fall in love with your project and want to sign up, donate, join, purchase, and share - because they instantly understand what it is. 

We'll also learn how to use the basic framework of The Hero's Journey to write a single paragraph that will hook people in to your story and tip and tricks on how to write better. 

Clear succinct copywriting is the secret to growing your movement. 

How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Imagine using augmented reality outdoors on a real city street to re-imagine the street and buildings around you covered in plants, trees, green walls, cars-free - or whatever your eco-future imagination can dream up.

Our guests today are Sebastian Schlecht and Robin Roemer. Sebastian is an architect from Germany who co-founded the Lala Ruhr project - an urban design lab that re-imagines cities with biophilic nature-based solutions. Robin is the co-founder of the software startup CityScaper which specializes in augmented reality and urban planning.

Sebastian and Robin got together and created this world-first AR project where people could hold up an iPad or iPhone and see a greenified ecotopia version of the street they were on - and they could even design their own.

This style of augmented reality is that it’s embedded into a streetscape’s geo coordinates - and that requires creating a 3D model of the street and geolocating the ecological design to fit with the exact location where the user is standing.

We’ll be taking a deep dive into the tech stack that includes Lidar, GIS, and Google AR Core, with Robin about 20 mins in.

Connect with Sebastian and Robin on LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-schlecht-fromgreytogreen/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-roemer/

The Lala Ruhr Lab https://www.lala.ruhr/en/start-en/

City Scaper https://ar-gument.de/

How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Join my private masterclass in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

We talk with environmental psychologist Anaïs Voşki. She's a researcher at Stanford University studying the effect that seeing the Earth from space has on astronauts' climate change attitudes and their sustainable lifestyles back on Earth. Her recent published research paper is titled “The Ecological Significance of The Overview Effect: Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours in Astronauts.”

The Overview Effect is an experience whereby people, especially astronauts, increase their environmental concern when viewing the Earth as a singular object from space. The Overview Effect is credited with not only influencing astronauts directly but also as being a keystone moment in cultivating the modern environmental movement.

Before the first moon landing in 1969, no photograph of the Earth had existed. These first photographs of Earth, coined the "pale blue dot," are thought to have elicited a new kind of environmental connection that had not existed before. 

Anaïs and I talk about the deeper experience of ecological transcendence that is embodied in The Overview Effect and how it could be applied to the practical design of encouraging more climate action and sustainable behaviors in the wider public.

Read the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494420300517

Connect with Anaïs Voşki on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaisvoski/

LINKS

👉 ⁠⁠⁠Get Katie's FREE Action Design Tips⁠⁠⁠

🌈 ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apply to The School of Climate Action Design⁠⁠⁠

🌏 ⁠⁠⁠Join Earth Doctors: 12 Weeks of Gamified Action for Kids⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠

📦 ⁠⁠⁠SHOP Climate Games, Books, Calendars + More⁠⁠⁠

How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how they can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns. 

1:17 Self Contol Skills Are More Important to Eco-Behaviors Than How Much People Care About the Planet Paper: When and how pro-environmental attitudes turn into behavior: The role of costs, benefits, and self-control 

6:12 People Have No Idea of the Climate Impact of Various Behaviors And Meat is the Big Ticket CO2 Item Paper: Knowledge, perceived potential and trust as determinants of low- and high-impact pro-environmental behaviours 

12:48 You Need to Tell People "**Everyone Else Around You** Supports Renewable Energy Policy" Paper: Effects of perceived social norms on support for renewable energy transition: Moderation by national culture and environmental risks 

16:05 Practicing Gratitude for Nature Will Help You Do More Eco Behaviors Paper: Gratitude to nature: Presenting a theory of its conceptualization, measurement, and effects on pro-environmental behavior 

19:54 Imagining Yourself Being Old Makes People Take Better Care of the Planet Now Paper: Enhancing environmental resource sustainability by imagining oneself in the future 23:01 Making People Feel Proud AND/OR Making People Feel Guilty About Their Eco-Behaviors Works  Paper: Pride and guilt predict pro-environmental behavior: A meta-analysis of correlational and experimental evidence 

The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79 February 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-environmental-psychology/vol/79/suppl/C 

The Journal of Environmental Psychology is the premier journal in the field, serving individuals in a wide range of disciplines who have an interest in the scientific study of the transactions and interrelationships between people and their surroundings (including built, social, natural and virtual environments, the use and abuse of nature and natural resources, and sustainability-related behavior). The journal publishes internationally contributed empirical studies and systematic reviews and meta-analyses of research on these topics that advance new insights. 

Sign up to katiepatrick.com for my free video course on environmental gamification and behavior design. 

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me. I'll listen to your mission over Zoom and share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how the findings can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns. 

2:19: People Who Care About Other People, Also Care About the Planet Paper: Self-construals and environmental values in 55 cultures 

4:37: Do This To A Menu and All the Meat-Eaters Will Order Vegan Paper: Menu design approaches to promote sustainable vegetarian food choices when dining out 

8:26: When Packaging Design Cues An Environmental Action Paper: A meaningful reminder on sustainability: When explicit and implicit packaging cues meet 

10.09 Quirky Novel Actions LIke Using Soap Nuts Can Break Other Bad Eco-Habits Paper: Doing Laundry With Biodegradable Soap Nuts: Can Rare and Novel Habits Break Bad Habitual Patterns?  

15:26 Personal Experience of Climate Disaster Makes People Support Climate Change Mitigation Paper: Exploring how climate change subjective attribution, personal experience with extremes, concern, and subjective knowledge relate to pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions in the United States 

18:18 Telling People It's Eco-Friendly Doesn't Really Work Paper: The Limited Impact of Positive Cueing on Pro-Environmental Choices 

20:46 Being Rich and Able to Consider Long Term Future Helps to Consider the Planet Socioeconomic status, time preferences and pro-environmentalism 

23:45 How To Stop People Flaking Out (Moral LIscencing) After They Do a Few Good Deeds Paper: Regulatory focus and self-licensing dynamics: A motivational account of behavioural consistency and balancing 

How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com 

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events.

Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

This episode is about testing if putting people into groups and asking them to compete towards an environmental goal works to get the group members to increase their environmental behavior, compared to asking people as individuals can often fail to get people to take the action. Group competition (like we see in sport) is a powerful psychological mechanism that has been largely untapped by the sustainability profession and it could be harnessed to reach our climate goals. 

Our guest today is Assistant Professor Laila Nockur Ph.D. from Aarhus University in Denmark. She recently published a paper titled “Fostering Sustainable Behavior Through Group Competition.” She specializes in the study of the "social dilemma." It's a tricky incentive problem that plagues most environmental change missions. A social dilemma means that to do something for the greater good (which ultimately helps everyone), each individual person has to make a personal sacrifice. These problems all involve an "environmental commons" - a resource we all share like the air, climate, streets, oceans, and forests. Laila's research shows how we can override the vexing problem of the social dilemma by putting people into groups and asking groups to compete against one another to reach an environmental goal. 

Read the paper, Fostering sustainable behavior through group competition https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494419305742

How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action.

Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.  Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com

Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events.

Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick 

Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn 

Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss