Behavior Change For Nature: A Behavioral Science Toolkit for Practitioners

This guide helps city officials and planners engage citizens in sustainable practices so they can achieve climate and biodiversity targets at the local level.

Created by:
Rare (Center for Behaviour & Environment) and the Behavioural Insights Team (2019).

What’s inside:
An 80+ page practical guide introducing key behavioural insights for environmental challenges and 15 concrete “behaviour change tools” for conservation.
Each tool outlines:

• What it is: e.g. public commitments and pledges, social norm campaigns (using community role models), default changes (opt-out conservation programmes), timely prompts, and emotion-based messaging.

• Why it works: the behavioural science principles behind it.

• How to apply it: step-by-step guidance and real-world case studies (e.g. boosting sustainable fishing or community recycling).

The toolkit also explains how to choose the right tool for each challenge and how to evaluate behaviour change outcomes in conservation projects. It promotes an experimental, iterative mindset. Encouraging practitioners to test, learn, and combine multiple tools for greater impact.

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