Testing innovative approaches for achieving pro-environmental behaviours - schools as networks

Client:
Defra
Start date:
April 2009
Due for completion:
November 2010

This Defra funded project, run by Brook Lyndhurst in conjunction with Peterborough Environment City trust (PECT), aims to test a variety of techniques for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour in schools in Peterborough. The findings from the research will provide evidence to support more widespread promotion of pro-environmental behaviours in schools in particular, and through social networks more generally.

Working in eight schools in the city – four primary and four secondary – the project will focus on promoting and encouraging textiles recycling, which has been identified as a ‘low uptake’ behaviour, with the potential to catalyse positive effects on wider pro-environmental behaviours.

The impacts of these interventions will be assessed at the beginning (baseline) and end of two terms of interventions, using a variety of techniques – discussion groups (younger pupils), electronic questionnaires (older pupils, parents and teachers) and postal questionnaires (parents of children in primary schools). Information on a range of attitudes and behaviours will be collected, with a focus on the manner in which information about the interventions diffuses through the various population groups. Results on claimed behaviour will be benchmarked by trying to measure actual tonnages of textiles collected for recycling during the course of the study.
 

Project Manager

Project Director

Other Project Staff

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