Research in brief: exploring the link between mindfulness and environmental behavior
It’s a fairly common paradox. While most individuals want to take different measures to help fight the climate crisis – many don’t manage to put their good intentions into practice. A new study* by researchers in France and Italy focuses on this so-called ‘intention-behavior gap’ or ‘green gap’. In other words, why don’t more people with environmentally friendly attitudes actually engage in more sustainable behavior?
10/02/2023
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The research team decided to study one potential way of reducing this gap – namely mindfulness meditation practices.
“Recent studies have explored how mindfulness – the state of being aware or conscious – can foster attitude changes toward climate change and have demonstrated a positive correlation in terms of intentions for more environmentally-friendly behavior,” explains Julie BAYLE-CORDIER, professor of ethics and mindfulness at IÉSEG and one of the co-authors of the study. “One of the key issues, however, is now understanding the mechanisms for reducing the gap between what we intend to do, and what we actually do in practice.”
Therefore, the team studied the role mindfulness training in reducing this ‘green gap’ to see if it could potentially influence people’s willingness to adopt more sustainable behaviors.
Through an online survey, they assessed the role of three different types of mindfulness interventions on a group of 1,000 participants: walking meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and breath meditation.
Three ways interventions can influence behavior
The results demonstrated that individuals who were more ‘mindful’ tended to be more supportive of different policies to mitigate climate change and therefore were more willing to adopt environmentally friendly behavior.
As individuals become more aware, they found that interventions can foster three elements which are important for influencing behavior: compassion, our connections with nature, and our openness to new experiences.
But do people actually go through with their intentions?
Overall, while all three meditation practices can indirectly foster sustainable behavior, the walking meditation stands out from the others as this was the only meditation to impact environmental attitude and climate policy support directly. “Measuring actual participant behavior was an important part of the study as we sought to go beyond simple intentionality by measuring participants’ decision to donate money to an NGO (in this case, to the World Wildlife Fund)” explains Professor Julie BAYLE-CORDIER.
Applications and future avenues to explore
According to the study, these results are encouraging given the need for behavior change to address the ongoing climate crisis.
“Our study contributes to show how mindfulness may be a pathway for individuals to embark on the necessary paradigm shift to fight climate change on multiple levels,” explains co-author, Professor Loic BERGER, a researcher at CNRS and the director of the IÉSEG research center on risk and uncertainty (iRisk).
However, the researchers also point to the importance of considering more regular and long-term mindfulness training initiatives – as the study shows that the effects of short-term interventions are only temporary. “Yet it’s incredible to see that just ten minutes of mindfulness meditation can already impact sustainable behavior. Imagine what a regular mindfulness practice could do for tackling climate change. The possibilities are endless,” explains Professor BAYLE-CORDIER.
More information is available in the full study:
*Breath, love, walk? The impact of mindfulness interventions on climate policy support and environmental attitudes. Sustainability (2023), Julie BAYLE-CORDIER (IÉSEG School of Management), Loic BERGER (CNRS, IÉSEG, UMR-9221-LEM), Rayan ELATMANI (IÉSEG), Massimo TAVONI (RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment & Politecnico di Milano).
