• New research shows what it takes to make

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Friday, April 01, 2022 22:30:36
    New research shows what it takes to make society change for the better


    Date:
    April 1, 2022
    Source:
    University of Maine
    Summary:
    New research suggests that social change may depend on the
    relationship between beneficial behaviors and policies. Using an
    innovative mathematical model, researchers studied a behavior that
    benefits groups, but does not spread without policy support, such
    as a costly measure to mitigate the effects of climate change. The
    results showed that both behavioral change and policy change are
    required to achieve large-scale social change, but policy change
    is especially critical.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    Many people try to make society change for the better. The real challenge
    is how to get good solutions to scale up for major change. New research suggests that social change may depend on the relationship between
    beneficial behaviors and policies.


    ==========================================================================
    The research, conducted by the University of Maine, University of Maine
    at Augusta, University of Vermont and Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, attempted to understand how society can accomplish major, transformative
    social change, particularly the kind of social change necessary to tackle
    the growing problem of climate change.

    The researchers studied a behavior that benefits groups, but does not
    spread without policy support, such as a costly measure to mitigate the
    effects of climate change. They created a mathematical model using an innovative combination of epidemiological and evolutionary techniques,
    which simulates a society where agents live in groups and adopt the
    beneficial behavior of peers -- behavior that, given the right conditions,
    can spread virally, but not if the institutional costs are too high.

    The model considers factors like the prevalence of adopters and
    non-adopters in a group; the diffusion of behaviors, both within the
    group and globally; the strength of institutions supporting the behavior
    and facilitating its spread; and the cost of those institutions.

    "Our model is unique because it combines behavioral change and policy
    change in a single system, and encourages us to think about social
    change in a richer way. Large-scale social change is not just policy
    or behavior, but the emergence of a new self-reinforcing system that
    combines both. This allows us to ask new questions, such as 'how would
    a new pattern of behavior and policy spread?'" says Timothy Waring,
    associate professor of social-ecological systems modeling at the
    University of Maine and co-author of the study.

    The results showed that both behavioral change and policy change are
    required to achieve large-scale social change -- and that they need to
    happen together.

    Though neither can get the job done on its own, policy change is
    especially critical.

    The researchers found that sometimes the beneficial behavior can spread
    too far. In some cases, the spread of behavior beyond groups with
    supporting policy can reduce its perceived success and slow the spread
    of the policy, thereby limiting beneficial social change overall.

    The simulation suggests that projects that involve both bottom-up viral
    spread of behavior and top-down policy change may be the best type of
    solution for large sustainability issues like climate change because
    they serve as an example and can spread between groups to influence
    major change.

    "For example, let's say a state wants to spread participation in
    a new organic composting law which would benefit towns," Waring
    says. "To make the system work, the collected waste must be purely
    organic material. But contributing pure organic waste takes effort for households, so the behavior does not take off on its own. This is a
    common problem for policy implementation. But if towns experiment with
    systems to help support and spread the behavior, the successful town
    programs can spread between towns along with household contributions,
    resulting in effective, large-scale change." Laurent He'bert-Dufresne,
    lead author on the study and associate professor at the University of
    Vermont, says, "Our model can help figure out how to balance bottom-up
    and top-down effects so that new solutions can scale. For example, it
    can help determine when we should promote a behavior like composting
    all over the country to normalize it and when we should instead focus
    on a local well- funded pilot project to show the potential benefits
    of composting." Waring said that in future research, the team aims to
    apply these types of models to all sorts of beneficial social change, particularly the challenge of tackling climate change.

    The study was published in the Royal Society Open Science on March
    23, 2022.

    The research is part of track 2 of UMaine's Experimental Program to
    Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) project.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Maine. Note: Content
    may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Laurent He'bert-Dufresne, Timothy M. Waring, Guillaume St-Onge,
    Meredith
    T. Niles, Laura Kati Corlew, Matthew P. Dube, Stephanie J. Miller,
    Nicholas J. Gotelli, Brian J. McGill. Source-sink behavioural
    dynamics limit institutional evolution in a group-structured
    society. Royal Society Open Science, 2022; 9 (3) DOI:
    10.1098/rsos.211743 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220401160545.htm

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