Structural

In discussing the structural component of influencing occupant behavior, we step away from human factors—personal and social—and focus on how to harness the power of non-human elements. Structural components support shifts in personal and group behavior. These include physical signals—what people touch, see, and otherwise perceive through their senses—as well as the formal and informal processes through which people work. Examples of structural components include policies, procedures, building technologies and systems controls, incentives, awards, and feedback mechanisms.

Refine incentives. Creating effective incentive programs can be challenging. Many well-intentioned programs inadvertently backfire. The most successful programs tend to be implemented after personal and social components have been addressed, for those who are already motivated to change and who already have the social support necessary to do so.

Following are some guidelines for establishing sustainability incentive programs:

• Ensure that incentives support staff in their personal context. Consider whether incentives encourage behavior that is already aligned with professional performance goals. If so, it may be valuable to document sustainability leadership and performance to support feedback during formal evaluation processes.
• Create incentives that support staff in their social context. Consider whether incentives dignify participants in the eyes of others or whether they have the potential to cause embarrassment.
• Set incentives that are valuable to their intended recipients, both to individuals and to their social groups. Consider recognizing outstanding sustainability leadership and performance with dignified, public praise. This may include physical awards and partnerships with local organizations within the area. Possibilities for smaller incentives may include recognition at ‘all hands’ meetings or other ‘town hall’ type events. Details matter; the value of a certificate of recognition may depend upon the job title of the person whose signature appears on it.
• Consider implementing programs that provide rewards only if performance targets are met. Receiving valued rewards can be good motivators, but people may be more motivated by the potential loss of rewards.

Organic food fair hosted by the U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou Green Team

Change the physical environment. For better or worse, much of our behavior is influenced by environmental forces. As a result, this resource, one of our most powerful sources of influence, is seldom engaged as an agent of change. Perhaps we more often identify goals, notice behavior that prevents us from achieving our goals, and focus on how to change people—the personal and social component—rather than their environment.

Thus, we may miss subtle opportunities. Sometimes the size or design of a chair can make a person more comfortable and, consequently, more productive or communicative. Sometimes the size of a room can make a person feel confined and less likely to continue working on a task. Similarly, a change in the physical environment where someone lives or works may cause them to behave in more sustainable ways. The powerful, and often undetected, influence of the physical environment presents good opportunity to shift occupant behavior. Things don’t resist change, and many of them are inexpensive.

Many physical adjustments are included in the impact area strategies.

Following are some additional suggestions for creating a physical environment that supports your goals:

• Ensure that the physical environment sends a message that aligns with your goals. For example, if one of your objectives is to encourage building occupants to provide more timely reports about building maintenance issues, then ensure that building maintenance staff are accessible to building occupants for feedback. One way to do this is by placing their office in a visible location. Another is to ensure that processes and technologies—such as email addresses—are in place to make communication easy and simple.
• Stage the physical environment to make sustainable behaviors easy and convenient for occupants. One way to do this is by setting appropriate defaults. For example, set occupancy sensors to turn the lights off, not on (when occupants need to turn the lights on, they can do so manually) or set toilets to flush less water when the handle is pushed down, the default direction, in a dual-flush toilet.
• Create a physical environment that invites opportunities for passive education and instruction. Provide cues to remind people of the behavior that you’re trying to influence. For example, install point-of-use signage, such as at hand-wash sinks, that provides information about how many liters (L) of water are consumed for every ten-second interval of use. Monitoring devices, such as those that keep continuous energy consumption records, provide valuable feedback to building occupants. For example, make building-energy-use dashboards that show occupants their current use as compared to an average (e.g., average of all post buildings).

In Honor of the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day, the U.S. Consulate General Chennai launched a new recycling program and showed support by wearing green

Image Source: U.S. Consulate General Chennaiarea