Progress in Reducing Emissions Report

In the 2022 Progress in Reducing Emissions report by The Climate Change Committee, it was stated that 62% of actions needed to abate carbon emissions by 2035 involve some form of behaviour change. That 62% can be further divided into two categories:

• 47% involve making choices that affect both demand and supply: consumers and businesses making lower-carbon choices that involve new low-carbon technology, such as driving an electric car or installing a heat pump instead of a gas boiler.
• 15% pertains to primarily demand-side choices that go beyond a switch to low-carbon technologies, such as shifting towards healthier and lower-carbon diets, reducing growth in aviation demand, shifting to lower-carbon goods, and choosing products that last longer and therefore improve resource efficiency.

Low Carbon Scotland: A Behaviours Framework

In 2013, the Scottish Government published Low Carbon Scotland: A Behaviours Framework, which forms the basis of subsequent strategies by outlining four behaviour change targets: home energy, transport, food, and consumption of goods and services.

Individual, Social, Material Tool

Alongside the Behaviours Framework, the Scottish Government launched a behaviour change tool called ISM (Individual, Social, Material). The ISM framework brings together main concepts from across the principal academic disciplines and turns them into a practical tool to be used throughout the policy-making process. The main concept is that interventions need to influence a person’s individual, social, and material context to achieve substantive and long-lasting change.

There is an accompanying technical guide for a more thorough explanation of the underlying theory and the different factors within ISM. SSN’s own ISM website contains other resources, such as a report on ‘ISM and the public sector’ and a presentation by Andrew Darnton, who developed ISM for the Scottish Government.

COM-B Model

The COM-B model is another well-known behaviour change tool that is founded on the principle that behaviour (B) has three components: Capability (C), Opportunity (O), and Motivation (M). There are many parallels between the COM-B model and the ISM Framework.

SSN Behaviour Change Workshop 2022

In October 2022, SSN, in collaboration with the Scottish Government and Improvement Services, held a Behaviour Change Workshop. The event write-up includes a summary of each speaker with accompanying slides, and useful links towards the end.