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Delivering effective messages is critical to creating a more sustainable and resilient culture. The explosion of social media has enhanced information access but has often reinforced and polarized pre-existing viewpoints and norms. In contrast, digital signs are an "in your face in your space" technology that have the potential to deliver common content to a diverse local audience. Environmental Dashboard (ED) is a communications platform and set of content applications that combines information on current environmental conditions, real-time resource consumption, positive actions being taken by community members, and a community calendar. We conducted a longitudinal study to assess whether ED content delivered via digital signs in public locations would result in desirable psychological changes within a community. Participants completed surveys in six designated signage locations prior to installation (N = 174) and following two years of continuous exposure (N = 133). We observed increases in pro-environmental social norms among people of color (a demographic emphasized); enhanced awareness of and sense of connection with the local community and ecology; increased self-reported electricity conservation; and increased perception of youth engagement (another demographic emphasized). Changes were mediated by exposure to digital signage. These findings support the hypothesis that content delivered through digital signs can strengthen pro-environmental and pro-social culture within communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many communities are working to enhance the sustainability of their physical, economic, and social systems. While economic and physical systems are routinely measured (e.g., money and energy), psychological and behavioral elements of social systems (norms, attitudes, and individual behavior) are seldom tracked. The objective of this research was to evaluate a potentially scalable approach to measure the impact of sustainability initiatives on these variables in a community engaged in holistic sustainability programming. Online survey data were collected in 2012 (N = 155) and 2016 (N = 137), measuring pro-environmental thought and behavior in two towns in Ohio: Oberlin, a community engaged in holistic efforts to enhance environmental sustainability; and a similar community (Berea) used as a control. Survey links were distributed via recruitment letters mailed to randomly selected community residents from a purchased mailing list. We used two (town) by two (time) between subjects' ANOVAs to evaluate whether Oberlin saw predicted increases in sustainable thought and behavior from 2012 to 2016, compared to the control community. Despite verifiable participation in and awareness of sustainability programs in Oberlin, our survey results did not provide strong evidence that programs resulted in the desired changes in attitudes, norms, and individual behaviors. Recycling attitudes and LED bulb installation were two exceptions. We conclude that assessing the psychological and behavioral dimensions of sustainability poses particular challenges. We encountered ceiling effects and inadequate statistical power. Possibly, norms and attitudes are not easily influenced even by a holistic community-wide effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies examine the effects of exposure to nature on positive affect and ability to reflect on a life problem. Participants spent 15 min walking in a natural setring (Studies 1, 2, & 3), an urban setting (Study 1), or watching videos of natural and urban settings (Studies 2 & 3). In all three studies, exposure to nature increased connectedness to nature, attentional capacity, positive emotions, and ability to reflect on a life problem; these effects are more dramatic for actual nature than for virtual nature. Mediational analyses indicate that the positive effects of exposure to nature are partially mediated by increases in connectedness to nature and are not mediated by increases in attentional capacity. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms that underlie the exposure to nature/well-being effects. Keywords: connectedness to nature; attentional capacity; positive affect; ability to reflect

Many of the greatest challenges in society have emerged as a result of humans acting within complex systems without fully understanding how they work. To address this problem, scholars from diverse fields have appealed to systems thinking. To date, a psychological perspective has been conspicuously absent from scholarship on this topic-a gap that the present paper seeks to fill by situating an individual difference measure of systems thinking in relation to well-studied constructs (e.g. holistic and relational thinking) and decision-making tasks in the psychological literature. Results indicate that the measure of systems thinking captures peoples' tendency to represent and reason about complex systems. The paper helps to validate a novel measure of an individual's tendency to engage in systems thinking and to provide a conceptual foundation for the thinking about the psychological underpinning of a systems thinking mindset. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies tested the hypotheses that (a) people think college tuition is too high, (b) people know very little about the subsidies colleges provide, and (c) providing people with subsidy information leads them to judge college prices as more reasonable. The results offered qualified support. First, people generally thought that public school charges were reasonable, but that private school charges were unreasonable. Second, people were aware of the subsidies provided by public schools, but were often unaware of those provided by private schools. Third, after receiving subsidy information, people increased their reasonableness ratings of private school prices but not public school prices. This was true even when they correctly estimated the private schools' subsidies. Making subsidy information salient seems to reframe reasonableness judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]