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Comment 58 for Comments on the RTAC (sb375-rtac-ws) - 1st Workshop.
First Name: Steve
Last Name: Raney
Email Address: cities21@cities21.org
Affiliation: Cities21
Subject: Sept 9 draft: education/outreach
Comment:
The proposed “positive spin” approach to green behavior change (and to convincing voters to allow unpopular climate protection measures such as large gas tax increases) runs the risk of being perceived as manipulative. Further, the “positive spin” approach as not been shown to be effective. The education and outreach strategy should be based on expert work from the fields of behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and persuasive technologies. 1. A large CA voting majority favors low gas prices and low parking prices. We have seen presidential candidates famously promising (pandering) to keep gas prices low while simultaneously promising to protect the climate. Politicians understand the electorate and “wisely” refuse to ask for individual sacrifice. 2. A large CA voting majority favors NIMBY land use policies over regional smart growth. Items 1 and 2 represent “Tragedy of the Commons” (TOC) issues. With the TOC, the self-interested majority favors a climate-harming policy because of perverse individual incentives. “If only I change, I’m worse off; if we all change, we’re all better off ... hence, I won’t change.” Behavioral experts should be called upon to develop a more effective education/outreach program to address the TOC issues that we face. Quite probably the outreach program will need to matter-of-factly teach voters about the TOC and then appeal to long-term over short-term optimization in a non-manipulative manner.
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Date and Time Comment Was Submitted: 2009-09-14 22:39:06
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