Kristy Revell

SSI fellow

Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

Interests

Environment and sustainability 

Research

My research focuses on sustainable living and pro-environmental behaviour change. Fossil fuels are fast running out, and the clock is ticking for government to develop plans that will reduce the country’s carbon emissions - emissions that were legislated to be reduced by 80% before 2050 in the Climate Change Act 2008.

A considerable amount of this 80% reduction is allocated to behaviour change but little has been done to actually identify where these behaviour change savings will come from. To plug this gap in knowledge and better understand the nature of pro-environmental behaviour change and how it can be generated and measured, my research aims to understand how local government can stimulate pro-environmental behaviour change in the borough population and what influence this has on the overall environmental impact of the borough population.

Through sustainability projects and interventions, local authorities can stimulate pro-environmental behaviour change. My research aims to understand what affects the success of these interventions and measure the change in behaviour can actually be generated by these projects. I am working to understand the effect that the delivery approach can have on the success of an intervention. For example, do top-down, government-led projects work better than community-led, council-facilitated projects in stimulating pro-environmental behaviour change?

To assess the effectiveness of these interventions in reducing the overall environmental impact of the population, it will be necessary to understand the impact that these changes in pro-environmental behaviour have on the environment. Presently behavioural changes rely greatly on assumptions; this research aims to accurately measure the impact of individual projects to find out whether these assumptions are accurate or misplaced. Measuring this impact is an area of my research that I am working on in collaboration with various councils in London.

Check out contributions by and mentions of Kristy Revell on www.software.ac.uk