Human Behavior Impact on Environment
Human being is, at the same time, the product of environment and its major influencing force. The development of human activities over the centuries and the development of knowledge innovation and technology allowed our society in many ways control and direct the environmental phenomena to a much greater extent than other living creatures. The truth is that this complex and multifaceted relationships between a human and nature brought a number of new challenges. Some of the human behavior and activities have the very clear impact on the environment, whether positive or negative, but the type of influence that one can predict and analyze. But the relationships are limited to this transparent behavior only and many of our actions continue being challenging and unclear in the way they impact the environment. With the above in mind, one of the most important tasks of the contemporary social environment is to be able to raise the awareness and, consequently, responsibility on a group and the individual level over the human behavior and its impact on the urban, rural environments and the nature as a whole. The argument of this essay is that the human activities and behavior over the past centuries have had the tremendous impact on the environment and the society reached the moment, where it has to focus on assuming responsibility for this behavior and develop strategies to change the culture to ensure harmony between the human and nature.
There are at least three ways,the environment shapes human behavior. These examples are right on the surface of the basic insight in this relationships. First of all, one can look at the theory of genotype. Scarr and McCartney (1983) already three decades ago outline the role of a genome as a sequence of human's DNA and argue that each individual is different. Our genes shape our personality, health profile and to a great extent the relationships with social and other environments, which constitute part of our "self". While genes are the influence of the environment on human beings, it is important to recognize that this phenomenon is not the sole explanation of human behavior and we are empowered to change over time and influence our DNA. Another interesting way of looking at a human as a product of nature is our predisposition to be born as male and female and consequent set of hormones in our nature, which influence and shape behaviors. One of the basic examples is the difference in male and female response to "permission". While women are more open and perceptive to verbal rules, male nature is more rebellious. If you ask a boy no to touch something, his first reaction would be to grab it, while a girl will follow a verbal order (Scarr and McCartney). Finally, we can see the influence of environment and the manner in which it shapes human behavior on the famous example of feral children. Isolated from human social, these children never learn basic social skills due to the fact that these skills are acquired during the process of acculturation and interaction in the social environment. Often, feral children never learn to talk and walk and demonstrate aversion to human activities and behaviors.
McGue and Bouchard (1998) argue that human behaviors can be influenced through understanding the psychopathology, personalities, and interests. The authors suggest that the human relationships with nature are based on shared and nonshared influences. To be able to influence human behavior and reduce the negative impact on the environment, therefore, it is important to address both, shared and the nonshared variety of influences. Czajkowski et al (2014) further look at social norms, morals, and self-interest in the context of the environmental behavior and outline four major drivers of environmentally friendly behavior: obligation, willingness to sort the issue, an idea of helping others and environment and cost-saving. Based on the above, it is possible to modify human behaviors in a way that they will act more environmentally-friendly. While many people can be influenced by positive propaganda of environmentally-concerned behavior and the demonstration of the negative impact of human activities on nature, others can only modify their attitude once they see cost benefits and improvement to their lifestyle. Some of the activities, which should be promoted, include recycling, use of alternative energy sources, saving of water and other natural resources and reducing the carbon footprint. By influencing these behaviors, it is possible to reduce the negative impact of human activities on nature.
Social norms outline the commonly accepted and expected behaviors of individuals in the human society. The example of a feral child, described above, is a good example of how social norms shape human behavior. The reality shows that social norms shape not only behaviors but our attitudes. Such unspoken rules force our music and activity tastes, influence our attitude towards the policies and social initiatives and outline our behaviors in the community we live. As a basic human social function, norms help to form our "comfort zone" and make us belong to a social group. For example, the advertisement of McDonald'son TV shapes our perception of a tasty and affordable meal, while social propaganda on the health consideration with regards to junk food can build on a totally opposite image of the same brand. Our beliefs and attitudes are influenced by social group leaders, mass propaganda and individual interests and the environment is one of them. The latest trends for "green products" and "healthy lifestyle" in Europe, for example, is one of the specific situations, how social norms and trends influence our environmental behavior.
It was identified that one of the most challenging tasks of practitioners, academics, and researchers in the area of human behavior and environmental studies is to ensure that the behaviors and attitudes of individuals are based on, as a minimum, awareness, and knowledge about the actual footprint and potentially long-term consequences for us, as a society. While many individuals and companies have changed their behaviors from environmentally-adverse to environmentally-concerned behavior, the society is still a long way from demonstrating truly environmentally-driven attitude. The problem is that little people recognize how today's activities, can harm or benefit future generations. The discussion about the environment, climate change and pollution is actual, but still theoretical as we grow our footprint in the natural environment, by improving urban setting with technological advancements, positively influencing the social environment, but not nature. There are many solutions to the actual problems, associated with the human behavior and its negative impact on the environment, which have been proposed and discussed by academics and industry practitioners. One of the most common and simple is to impose a number of written and unwritten social norms and policies, which would impact attitudes from within the core of the social group. Regulations on environmental footprint from households and businesses, implemented in the UK are one of the good examples of this solution. Another approach, which can give a sustainable improvement to the issues is the early-age education,which demands implementation of environmental education in the pre-school educational curriculum as well as fundamental education (MSU and Deloitte, 2015). This will not give the immediate response, but will help to raise new generations of the millennials, which have much better insight into the environmental issues and have embedded social norms, behaviors, and attitudes, which will create harmony between the human and nature.
References
Scarr S. and McCartney K. (1983). How People Make Their Own Environments: A Theory of Genotype → Environment Effects. Child Development. Wiley and Sons. Vol.54(2). 424-435.
McGue M. and Bouchard T. J. (1998). Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Behavior. Department of Psychology and Institute of Human Genetics. Vol 21(1). 1-24.
Czajkowski N., Hanley N. and Nyborg K. (2014). Social Norms, Morals and Self-interest as Determinants of Pro-environment Behaviour. Faculty of Economic Sciences. Working Papers. 134(1). 2-22.
MSU and Delloite (2015). Gen Y and Sustainability. Michigan State University and Deloitte. Retrieved 21 June 2016, http://news.msu.edu/media/documents/2010/01/7f991e2a-9b1d-4949-abf0-0f34c471cd7d.pdf
