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Human Behavior Change for Sustainable Development: Perspectives Informed by Psychology and Neuroscience

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Quality Education

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

Synonyms

Behavior change; Education; Human behavior; Multidisciplinary perspectives; Neuroplasticity; Neuroscience; Psychology; Sustainable development

Definition

The science of human behavior change is a complex field of investigation (Young 2017). On the one hand, there are those who promote the idea that education alone is sufficient to instigate behavior change. According to this view, all that educators need to do is to educate people with sound science about the physical causes of environmental degradation, progressive resource depletion, and corresponding sustainability requirements, and this knowledge will then trigger human resilience and “behavior change” (Luetz and Sultana 2019). However, this conventional view of education, sometimes called “enlightenment reasoning,” is contested by social scientists who insist that more knowledge alone does not spawn or sustain behavior change because human behavior tends to be irrational and governed by social norms and underlying...

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Master of Social Science Leadership program at Christian Heritage College (School of Social Science), which through its research and teaching activities on sustainable change management gave rise to this publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, CHC Higher Education, Brisbane/Carindale, QLD, Australia

    Johannes M. Luetz, Rebecca Margus & Brooke Prickett

  2. School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Johannes M. Luetz

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  1. Johannes M. Luetz
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  2. Rebecca Margus
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  3. Brooke Prickett
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Correspondence to Johannes M. Luetz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. European School of Sustainability, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

  2. Center for Neuroscience & Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Anabela Marisa Azul

  3. Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Passo Fundo University Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Passo Fundo, Brazil

    Luciana Brandli

  4. Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Pinar Gökcin Özuyar

  5. International Centre for Thriving, University of Chester, Chester, UK

    Tony Wall

Section Editor information

  1. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Petra Molthan-Hill

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Luetz, J.M., Margus, R., Prickett, B. (2019). Human Behavior Change for Sustainable Development: Perspectives Informed by Psychology and Neuroscience. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69902-8_12-1

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