Empowering Urban Communities: Strategies for Boosting Volunteer Engagement in Freshwater Restoration.

Part 1 of 2 presentations from Aotearoa New Zealand’s BioHeritage Challenge/Ngā Koiora Tuku Iho ‘Empowering Environmental Stewardship and Kaitiakitanga’ team

Lynette will discuss her research teams’ study on encouraging key beneficial behaviours (reporting stormwater pollution, installing urban rainwater tanks, volunteering) for urban freshwater biodiversity.

Residents’ behaviour is fundamental to protecting and restoring freshwater biodiversity in urban areas. However, a key challenge facing government agencies, environmental organisations, and community groups is convincing people to engage in activities that will benefit urban freshwater biodiversity. Lynette will describe a systematic approach to designing effective human behaviour change interventions, illustrated with a practical example for improving volunteer involvement with urban freshwater restoration projects.

The research team conducted a set of nationwide online surveys and established volunteering for urban freshwater restoration as a key target behaviour. They developed a randomised control trial with a restoration group in Kirikiriroa | Hamilton and tested ways to increase first-time volunteer participation and investigated volunteering benefits. Participants were recruited through social media and 627 potential first-time volunteers were identified. In the first stage of their experiment, they found that a $50 voucher combined with a nudge was most effective at increasing volunteer rates at an actual event. In the second stage, they found that volunteering for the first time increases future volunteering behaviour, generates positive spillovers to other pro-environmental behaviours and strengthens environmental attitudes and self-identity.

Register in advance for this webinar: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ydFPfWkTQ9e-W0678a1U8A