Local Environment

The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

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Overcoming the ‘value‐action gap’ in

environmental policy: Tensions between national
policy and local experience

James Blake

To cite this article: James Blake (1999) Overcoming the ‘value‐action gap’ in environmental policy:
Tensions between national policy and local experience, Local Environment, 4:3, 257-278, DOI:
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Local Environment, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1999

ARTICLE

Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap'

in Environmental Policy: tensions
between national policy and local
experience
JAMES BLAKE

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with debates over the implementation of

sustainability objectives. In particular, it focuses on policies that address the
'value-action gap' in environmental policy. Using evidence from the author's
research connected with the UK Going for Green Sustainable Communities
Project in Huntingdonshire, the paper highlights the tensions between national
policies that are based on an 'information deficit' model of participation, and
local research and experience that posits a more complex relationship between
individuals and institutions. While this suggests the need to develop more
differentiated policies based on the restructuring of socioeconomic and political
institutions, the paper warns against knee-jerk calls for more local, community
or public participation which simply replace one set of generalised appeals with
another. The paper concludes that greater emphasis must be placed on the
negotiation of partnerships that are more sensitive to local diversity, and
which involve a more equitable distribution of responsibility between different
environmental stakeholders.

Introduction
Although sustainable development acquired its initial currency in the
international arena, it will be the local responses ... that will determine
its success or failure as a practical programme. (Munton, 1997, p. 148)
Discourses of sustainable development now command wide support amongst
environmentalists, politicians and publics alike. Indeed, research increasingly
shows that high levels of awareness and concern about environmental issues
have spread throughout the population (see Worcester, 1994; Blake & Carter,
1997). Debates are therefore starting to form around the implementation of
sustainability objectives. However, tensions are emerging over the relative
responsibilities of different actors (individuals, communities, business, govern-
ment, environmental groups) and over the most effective means to overcome the
'value-action gap'1 by translating environmental concern into pro-environmental
James Blake, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge
CB2 3EN, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1223 333399. Fax: +44 (0)1223 333392. Email: [email protected]

1354-9839/99/030257-22 © 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

 J. Blake

behaviour (see Eden, 1993; Harrison et al, 1996; Hinchliffe, 1996; Burgess
et al., 1998).
With exactly this latter aim in mind, the UK government set up a citizen's
environmental initiative, Going for Green (GFG). GFG has centred around a
national awareness campaign, but a key element from the outset was the
establishment of a set of local Sustainable Communities Projects (SCPs),
involving partnerships between local authorities and independent university
research teams. These had the important task of exploring the everyday problems
and opportunities that confront different people in diverse communities as they
attempt to move from pro-environmental concern to action.
Unfortunately, despite widespread support for the initiative's ambitious aims,
differences began to emerge between the messages that national GFG was
producing, and feeding back to government, and the findings of many local
authorities and research teams on the ground (cf. CSEC, 1996; Blake & Carter,
1997; GFG, 19982). In this paper, based on research experience of the Hunting-
donshire SCP3, I offer some observations on these differences, which reflect
contrasting approaches to overcoming the 'value-action gap' in environmental
policy. In the first section, I introduce the processes associated with GFG, before
illustrating the adherence of GFG to an 'information deficit' model of environ-
mental participation (see also Burgess et al., 1998). I explore this by comparing
the national and local elements of the initiative. In the middle section, I review
academic debates concerning the value-action gap, which have primarily taken
place within social and environmental psychology. I draw on detailed empirical
research within the Huntingdonshire SCP, and a burgeoning social science
literature, to argue that the relationship between environmental concern and
action is characterised by a more complex relationship between individuals and
socioeconomic and political institutions than is recognised by GFG. This has
important implications for national and international policy initiatives that
attempt to encourage greater participation in sustainability processes. However,
in the third section, I suggest that alternatives which call for more local,
community or public participation must pay critical attention to the different
meanings of these concepts in everyday contexts. I conclude with some
reflections on possible institutional responses to the challenges of implementing
sustainability at local level.

Going for Green and the 'Information Deficit'

Going for Green was set up in 1996 as the third element of the Government's
response to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio (DoE, 1994b); the other two being the
Panel on Sustainable Development—a committee of six experts—and the Round
Table on Sustainable Development, a wider forum for discussion involving
different stakeholders in the environmental field.
The overall aim of GFG is to encourage:

... [an] awareness of the part that... [the public's] personal choices
can play in delivering sustainable development and to enlist... [the
258
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

public's] support and commitment for the coming years. (DoE, 1994b,
p. 19)
The central message of the campaign is that everyday decisions of people, as
individuals and in communities, can have a large aggregate effect on the
environment. As GFG's slogan confirms, individuals could be "making a world
of difference—together", and thus, in addition to simply promoting awareness,
GFG "was set up to secure the participation of individuals" (GFG, 1998, p. 1)
in pro-environmental behaviour.
Initially, GFG consisted largely of a major advertising campaign in the
national press. The campaign's objectives are encapsulated in a five-point Green
Code, developed in a similar style to the very successful Green Cross Code of
the 1980s.4 Individuals are exhorted to 'cut down waste', 'save energy and
natural resources', 'travel sensibly', 'prevent pollution' and 'look after the local
environment'. GFG subsequently became a private limited company, and as such
it is partly responsible for raising its own finance through sponsorship deals with
a variety of organisations, which benefit GFG by providing it with extra
publicity. This had led to the Going for Green logo appearing on consumable
goods such as sugar and cereal packets. GFG's remit includes three other areas
of work:
• Eco-schools programme: an award scheme aimed at improving accessible
environmental education;
• Research and Development: in particular the invention of the Eco-Cal indi-
cator of individual environmental impact, and the 'Slim Your Bin' household
waste prevention campaign;
• Sustainable Communities Projects (SCPs).
The idea of encouraging local environmental improvement by working towards
'sustainable communities' has rapidly gained international currency in the last
decade.5 The GFG Sustainable Communities Projects were initially set up in five
locations around the country, including the parliamentary constituencies of the
then Prime Minister John Major (Huntingdonshire) and the then Opposition
Leader Tony Blair (Sedgefield). The projects were intended to test the responses
of communities to the Green Code by "examining the factors which encourage
or prevent people from adopting environmentally responsible behaviour", and by
"investigating people's willingness and ability to participate in locally-based
initiatives" (GFG, 1996, p. 3).
In each area, the SCPs have involved a partnership between a local authority
and other organisations (including businesses and universities), which has aimed
to develop, implement and monitor a variety of local and community environ-
mental projects over a period of three years. The projects' objective was to show
how links can be made between initiatives that help the environment and those
which build a more cohesive local community. Thus "there is a strong commit-
ment to local ownership" (GFG, 1996, p. 3) with the focus very much on the
'bottom-up' identification of objectives, projects and indicators. While this is
similar to the objectives of the wider Local Agenda 21 (LA21) initiative, GFG's
scope is more limited. Each SCP has been based specifically within two or more
259
 /. Blake
communities of contrasting social and economic characteristics, and has aimed
to provide insights on individual participation in particular pro-environmental
actions which can then be developed into a model applicable to a wider range
of communities. By contrast, the LA21 initiative has been countrywide, and has
involved greater emphasis on the need for strategic positioning of environmental
concerns within local authority structures and longer-term processes of
community participation.6
However, as GFG progressed, tensions became evident between the aims and
expectations of the national organisation, and the experiences and research of the
local SCPs (Smith et al., 1999) which ultimately questioned the approach and
assumptions of the national campaign. Nevertheless, national GFG was reluctant
to reappraise the campaign, reaffirming the importance of a national and regional
advertising campaign based around adoption of the Green Code:
Going for Green proposes that behaviour change can best be achieved
by offering people easily understood information and appropriate
support to generate and turn interest into action. ... Raising awareness
of the issues of sustainable development will require a sustained public
relations and mass media advertising campaign, making use of TV as
well as local press and radio. (GFG, 1998, pp. 3, 5)
While the stated aim of the SCPs was "examining the factors which encourage
or prevent people from adopting environmentally responsible behaviour" (GFG,
1996, p. 3), few attempts were made to move beyond the core assumption that
the main barrier between environmental concern and action is lack of appropriate
information. Despite research findings that point to a more complex picture,
national GFG, even when representing the findings of the local SCPs, still clung
to this 'information deficit' model:
Experience from the sustainable communities project has shown us
that one of the most effective ways of encouraging people to act is to
highlight a few facts with real impact... this information should be
locally relevant, practical and easily available to people. (GFG, 1998,
p. 8, emphasis added)
This highlighted differences between national GFG and the local SCPs in
the model of participation being applied. Thus, while national GFG wished
to "influence the behaviour of the public through encouraging participation
in sustainable development" (GFG, 1998, p. 6), this vision of participation
primarily entailed a national programme of education, which was largely top
down (based on a prescribed code of behaviour) and expert led, and whose
success could be judged in terms of measurable indicators and outcomes,
such as the number of people who had heard of the GFG initiative, or who
took basic Green Code actions, or whose Eco-Cal scores had reduced. In
this respect, it is interesting to note that in 1996, while 63% of Huntingdon-
shire respondents recognised the phrase 'going for green' as a general environ-
mental slogan, only 2% related it to the actual GFG initiative (Blake & Carter,
1997).

260
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

This 'model' of participation is further exemplified in GFG's vision of its

future role, which would involve "carry [ing] out co-ordinated policies designed
to ensure public understanding and involvement in sustainable development"
(GFG, 1998, p. 6, emphasis added) with a future sustainable communities project
that would "provide support and expertise for local authorities and community
groups to adopt the model developed by Going for Green" (GFG, 1998, p. 7,
emphasis added).
By contrast, the local SCPs saw their role as pilot testing different participa-
tory initiatives (many of which involve members of communities themselves in
their design) in order to meet particular local environmental and social needs,
which frequently ranged beyond the Green Code (Smith et ah, 1999). In such
pilot projects, success should be judged not through hard statistics detailing
levels of environmental concern and action (indeed, in these terms, some of the
initiatives might well be seen to have failed) but in terms of the degree of
learning that occurred from project experiences, however these may have varied
from the original aims.7 This might include the identification of particular
institutional arrangements or processes that could begin to build the capacity for
behavioural change at both individual and community level. Indeed, one of the
most innovative outcomes of the projects has been the development of creative
partnerships between university research communities and local authorities that
deliberately aimed to move away from formal contractual relations towards a
more independent and flexible relationship based on mutual trust (Smith et al.,
1999). In Huntingdonshire, for example, despite the local authority having little
initial experience of community participation or environmental initiatives, a
productive relationship developed. This included an active advisory role for
researchers in local initiatives (for example attending local public meetings, and
developing a searchable database of research results for use by the local
authority), and assistance from local authority personnel in certain aspects of
data collection and research (such as collating census information). As
Hutchcroft (1996) notes, "as well as supporting practical sustainable develop-
ment on the ground, these alliances could be the motors for much needed
institutional change" (p. 224).
In sum, two different understandings of the role of the SCPs emerged as the
GFG initiative progressed. National GFG viewed the SCPs primarily in terms of
their utility as a back-up tool for the national campaign, while researchers,
professional officers and communities were more interested in exploring new
opportunities for local 'institutional learning' (e.g. Hajer, 1996), in contradiction
to the 'information deficit' model employed by national GFG. Unfortunately,
this latter model appears to be dominant in wider government policy discourse.
As Eden (1996) has argued:

... [p]olicy still fails to appreciate the huge gulf between information
and action, between understanding as awareness and understanding as
the cause of behaviour. Policy-makers seem to assume that environ-
mental education, drawing from scientific work, will lead to people
making the link between policy and action and acting in order to meet
policy objectives, (p. 197)
261
 J. Blake

Individuals, Institutions and Responsibilities: explaining the 'value-action'

gap
In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the social sciences in
exploring the 'everyday' environmental values of different members of society,
as both researchers and policy makers have increasingly acknowledged the key
role that individual people play in the quest for sustainability. In this section of
the paper, I look in detail at those aspects of the Huntingdonshire SCP baseline
research that investigated the 'barriers' to participation. Thus "individuals must
accept responsibility for the future, but conditions, institutions and their own
day-to-day responsibilities constrain their actions" (Myers & Macnaghten, 1998,
p. 346).

Huntingdonshire SCP and Baseline Research

The Huntingdonshire SCP is based in three very different communities: a
part-council-owned estate in St Neots, a suburban estate in St Ives, and the
largely dormitory village of Needingworth (see Figure 1). The project centres
around a partnership between Huntingdonshire District Council and Cambridge
University Committee for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (CIES). The
approach adopted by the university aimed to develop a multidisciplinary port-
folio of research (see also Davies & Gathorne-Hardy, 1997; Rutherford, 1997).
The baseline research employed a semi-structured questionnaire in order to
collect both quantitative data (e.g. on the frequency of environmental action)
and more qualitative information.8 The research was based on 163 detailed
face-to-face interviews with individuals which gathered information on:
• perceptions of the local area;
• general and specific environmental concerns; possible solutions and responsi-
bilities for action;
• householder environmental actions;
• barriers to environmental actions and potential solutions;
• potential local authority and community involvement in environmental initia-
tives;
• the quantity, quality and provision of environmental information;
• concern for the countryside and responsibility for countryside protection.
Given the nature of the data collection, interviews were not tape recorded:
however, full notes of all responses were taken and collated into a fully
searchable Microsoft Access database, specially designed to allow simultaneous
quantitative and qualitative analysis (see also Philip, 1998). Where appropriate,
respondents' verbatim comments have been reproduced from the research
database.9
The research findings on levels of environmental concern and action, while
interesting, are not the particular concern of this paper.10 However, they confirm
two familiar points:
• environmental concern, and basic environmental action (such as recycling),
are now becoming widespread throughout the population; but
262
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

COUNTY BOUNDARY
LINCOLNSHIRE DISTRICT BOUNDARY
(within Cambridgeshire)
Major Urban Area

• Pilot Communities
1 - The Duck Lane Estate
PETERBOROUGH 2-BurleighHill
3 - Holywell-cum-Needingworth Parish
a - Needingworth Village
b-HoIywell Village

HUNTINGDONSHIRE
EAST
CAMBRIDGESHIRE

CAMBRIDGESHIRE

SOUTH
CAMBRIDGESHIRE

BEDFORDSHIRE

HERTFORDSHIRE

FIGURE 1. Location of the three pilot communities.

• few people take environmental actions which involve changes to their

lifestyle.11
Effectively, this means that the environmental actions that people take are
tokenistic and may be unrelated to the particular concerns that they express
about the environment.
This environmental value-action gap is clearly of key importance to environ-
mental policy, not least because it is repeated at other scales, involving different
actors: thus local or national government, business and even international
263
 J. Blake

organisations have policies whose effects fail to match up to the environmental

concerns people are expressing. Indeed, it is this very 'gap' that national Going
for Green is trying to bridge.

Theorising the 'Value-Action Gap'

For many years, debates over the environmental value-action gap, and attitude-
behaviour models more generally, have primarily taken place within social or
environmental psychology. While this work has become increasingly sophisti-
cated, and (especially in Europe) more alert to the social and constructed nature
of environmental values, research has been based largely on cognitive theories
of how individuals form their attitudes and plan their behaviour in a rational and
often unproblematic way.12 While most commentators agree that there is no
simple correspondence between attitudes and behaviour, different studies have
posited various possible explanations for the discrepancy. Taken together, they
suggest that the attitude-behaviour relationship is moderated by two primary sets
of variables: the structure of personal attitudes themselves; and external or
situational constraints (O'Riordan, 1981; Guagnano et ah, 1995; Hallin, 1995;
Baron & Byrne, 1997). Attitudes are likely to be better predictors of behaviour
if the attitudes in question are strong relative to other (possibly conflicting)
attitudes, and based on direct experience. Situational constraints mainly refer to
whether the behaviour is in line with the individual's favoured social norms,
which in turn are influenced by different social, economic, demographic and
political contexts. Ajzen & Fishbein have developed an additional theory of
'reasoned action' and 'planned behaviour' in which they propose that, if action
is to take place, individuals must have evaluated positively the specific proposed
behaviour, as well as holding generally favourable attitudes. In other words, they
argue that individual attitudes must include an intention to carry out a specific
action that reflects a reasoned evaluation of the likely consequences of that
action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). In response to this,
other researchers have pointed out that these intentions are related to more
general values, worldviews and beliefs (e.g. Stern et ah, 1995; Karp, 1996).
Despite these apparent differences, many of these perspectives share common
roots in a rationalistic model where reasoned human agency is viewed as the key
determinant of action, and where social and institutional constraints, if included
at all, are considered only for their effects on individual attitudes. Moreover,
these attitudes (and actions) are treated as stable, discrete and objective entities
suitable for investigation by quantitative techniques. This theoretical approach
has also been the dominant influence on public and policy research into public
attitudes, which has mainly involved quantitative opinion polling (e.g. DoE,
1994a; Worcester, 1994; DETR, 1998). Indeed, in Ajzen & Fishbein's summary
of the assumptions of their model, the influences on current Going for Green
thinking are clearly visible:

Generally speaking, the theory [of reasoned action] is based on the

assumption that human beings are usually quite rational and make
264
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

systematic use of the information available to them. (Ajzen & Fish-

bein, 1980, p. 5)
While these approaches are useful in exploring the complex relationships
between different people's beliefs, attitudes, intentions and actions, they often
fail to incorporate structural and institutional arrangements that enable or
constrain individual environmental action. Partly as a result, a new body of
literature has been developing rapidly which is informed by broader social
scientific theory. The main thrust of this approach has been neatly summarised
by Redclift & Benton:
One of the most important insights which the social scientist can offer
in the environmental debate is that the eminently rational appeals on
the part of environmentalists for 'us' to change our attitudes or
lifestyles, so as to advance a general 'human interest' are liable to be
ineffective. This is not because ... 'we' are irrational, but because the
power to make a significant difference, one way or the other, to global
or even local environmental change is immensely unevenly distributed.
(1994, pp. 7-8)
This body of work therefore aims to develop a perspective theoretically
grounded in a more dialectical understanding of the relations between individu-
als and social institutions,13 and methodologically informed as much by ethnog-
raphy or anthropology as by psychology. Greater emphasis has been placed on
qualitative and contextualised investigations of how people form views about the
environment as they live their lives in different social situations.14 Research has
shown that people do not have a fixed, rational and ready-made set of values that
will be activated by particular calls to action; rather people's values are
negotiated, transitory and sometimes contradictory.15 Different people will inter-
pret and respond to the same environmental information in unpredictable and
often highly variable ways, at times producing a quite opposite interpretation to
the one expected by those (often in the policy community) who promulgate the
information (Myers & Macnaghten, 1998).
However, this variability is not simply a matter of individual contrariness. As
John Dryzek (1996) points out, "the very reason we have social science at all is
that society, and social structure, are not reducible to psychology" (p. 30).
Rather:
... the more general characteristics which affect the quality of people's
identification with public institutions are fundamentally important in
explaining the apparent fluctuations in people's attitudes and behaviour
towards the environment. (Macnaghten & Urry, 1998, p. 92)
In the baseline research, our aim was to shed light on the value-action gap by
asking the respondents themselves to identify the barriers or reasons that
prevented them from carrying out particular environmental actions, despite a
general concern for the environment. We then summarised or coded the
responses according to particular headings. Figure 2 illustrates these 'key-
worded' responses, grouped into three different categories of obstacles that exist
265
 J. Blake

between the sphere of 'concern' and that of 'action': individuality; responsibility

and practicality.
This diagram illustrates that people's responses concerning barriers to en-
vironmental action can be viewed as reflecting aspects of a wider dialectic
between individuals and social institutions. The responses confirm that both
psychological and institutional factors affect individual action. Which factors are
important in any one case will vary for different individuals, environmental
actions, and social or institutional constraints.

Individuality
Thus, the first set of individual barriers refers to what social psychologists would
call personal attitudes or cognitive structure. In particular, these barriers are
important for people whose environmental attitudes are peripheral within their
wider attitudinal structure. Environmental concerns are outweighed by other
conflicting attitudes: laziness or lack of interest prevents some people from
prioritising the environment in their behaviour. Others view themselves as the
wrong type of person to do certain types of environmental actions, such as
campaigning.

Responsibility
The second set of barriers is more concerned with the way social or external
factors influence people's evaluation of the possible consequences of particular
environmental actions (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975): in other words, people's
perceptions of institutions and responsibility. At present, despite general environ-
mental concern, that evaluation is often negative. Even if 'individual' factors
would support environmental action, people may still not act because they do not
feel that they (as individuals) should take the responsibility for helping to solve
environmental problems. Often, this reflects a social dilemma (see Chase &
Ponagopoulos, 1995) where people do not see that acting on their own (often in
opposition to perceived social norms)16 would make any difference: their actions
would lack efficacy. This was revealed in interview responses:
[You] can't act on your own ... [it's] a wasted effort. (Burleigh Hill)
There is the problem that some people ... feel powerless as they are
such a tiny cog in a big wheel. (Needingworth)
Likewise, people who did not own their own property do not see why they
should be responsible for household environmental improvements which would
not necessarily benefit them directly. People may also see 'no need' to help the
environment because they ascribe responsibility to other individuals or groups
whose actions they believe will be more effective. However, even people who
do accept the responsibility for helping the environment and believe that their
action can make a difference may still fail to act on their concerns. As Eden
(1993) comments, we then need to examine "the context and constraints
restricting the fulfilment of pro-environmental responsibility as behaviour"
(p. 1752).
266
 Type of Barrier
Individual
barriers
--~
Individual in

Social / institutional
I
social context barriers I"

ENVIRONMENTAL INDIVIDUALITY RESPONSIBILITY PRACTICALITY ENVIRONMENTAL 1

CONCERN ACTION
I
I
laziness lack of efficacy lack of time
Barriers wrong person no need lack of money
lack of interest lack of trust
don't own property
lack of information
lack of encouragement
I
lack of facilities
storage difficulties
I
physically unable

FIGURE 2. Barriers between environmental concern and action.

O
 J. Blake

In Huntingdonshire, this context often reflects a lack of trust in the institutions

that affect possible action. In particular, this is manifested in a suspicion of local
and national government, and scepticism over conflicting environmental infor-
mation:
Action shouldn't go through councils as they have a history of
incompetence; they are not set up well and [are] very inflexible to
change ... [they] can't do things that upset powerful lobby groups such
as farmers. (Needingworth)
You need to know who wrote it, and who they are paid by, what their
background is, what the position of the newspaper is ... overall we
need more open information. (Needingworth)
The irony is, of course, that although governmental institutions are trusted least,
they are seen as most responsible for causing, and therefore solving, environ-
mental problems (see also Bulkeley, 1997; Macnaghten & Jacobs, 1997; Mun-
ton, 1997). This has serious implications for government participation schemes,
particularly those relying on an 'information deficit' model. As Macnaghten &
Urry (1998) conclude:
... since governments and businesses were contributing to the prob-
lems rather than solving them, the public's participation in government
sponsored programmes such as Local Agenda 21 or the UK's Going
for Green seemed unlikely, (p. 231)

Practicality
None of the barriers mentioned above would prevent some people from acting
to help the environment. Both their general attitudes as individuals, and their
specific evaluation of particular actions lead them to take individual responsi-
bility for pro-environmental behaviour. In Fishbein & Ajzen's terms, they hold
an intention to carry out specific actions. For these theorists, "barring unforeseen
events, a person will usually act in accordance with his or her intention" (Ajzen
& Fishbein, 1980, p. 5). Figure 2 shows, however, that there are still practical
social or institutional constraints that may prevent people from adopting pro-
environmental action, regardless of their attitudes or intentions. These include
lack of time, lack of money and lack of physical storage space (in the case of
recycling), as well as lack of information, encouragement and pro-environmental
facilities such as recycling and adequate public transport provision. Some people
may also be physically unable to carry out some environmental actions.
Clearly, there will be overlaps between the three sets of obstacles, and the
reasons why people do not engage in pro-environmental action will not always
fall into such neat categories. For example, according to different priorities, one
respondent might admit that failure to act reflected 'laziness', while another
would justify it as 'lack of time' (see Rutherford, 1997). The relationship
between individuals and the social context within which they live is complex.
Over a longer period of time, factors such as 'lack of time' or 'lack of money'
will be related to individual decisions and actions. However, what this
268
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

classification shows is that at a particular moment, and in a particular place,

distinctions can be made between different types of barriers that may prevent
individual environmental action, and that policy will need to respond in differen-
tiated ways.
Unfortunately, most local and national environmental policies have tended to
tackle those barriers which require the least alteration to existing policies: for
example by providing more recycling facilities, or more information (as with the
national GFG campaign). What Figure 2 illustrates is that this is unlikely to
result in overall higher levels of environmental action unless policies also tackle
other individual, social and institutional barriers. Some of these barriers may be
deep rooted and highly resistant to change. In these cases, policy makers need
to recognise that the challenges involved in changing lifestyles are both long
term and sometimes structural. For example, overcoming people's mistrust of
organisations will require gradual construction of more equitable relationships
between individuals and institutions of local governance. Experience from the
Local Agenda 21 process suggests that this will be no easy task. However, the
evidence is growing that institutions which adopt a more flexible and participa-
tory approach, and which seek to develop partnerships with organisations that
are trusted more by the public, such as environmental NGOs, are likely to be
most successful (Worcester, 1994; Selman & Parker, 1997; Young, 1997).
Another possible policy response is to encourage initiatives with a social
component, which may help to alter people's perceptions of social norms and
lack of efficacy. In Huntingdonshire, one-third of respondents expressed a
willingness to become involved in a local group responsible for building a sense
of community around improvements to the local environment. This was viewed
in much broader terms than the Green Code, and involved links between the
environment and issues such as personal security (e.g. through the promotion of
safe [walking] routes to school) and the need for a more active sense of local
place and history (e.g. through the renovation of the village memorial in
Needingworth). Indeed, 40% mentioned that they would like to see environ-
mental information provided through such a group, as they would be more likely
to trust and act on information passed to them personally. Such groups might
be more likely to succeed if they were based around existing community
organisations, and began by demonstrating tangible improvements to the local
environment. As one respondent suggested, initiatives could be:
... based on people's hobbies (for example fishing) as they would then
get more involved. (Needingworth)
The Huntingdonshire research also illustrates that the importance of different
barriers to action will vary widely in different communities. Indeed, within one
locality, there may be many overlapping communities each exhibiting a very
different relationship between environmental concern and action. There can
never be a blueprint for encouraging environmental action: different strategies
must be designed to be appropriate to specific relationships between individuals,
communities and institutions. In Needingworth, for example, even the practical
barriers are highly context dependent. Lack of money was an important barrier
for some residents, and thus a strategy involving financial incentives (for
269
 J. Blake

example illustrating the cost savings of energy efficiency) might be appropriate.

However, some villagers are much more affluent, and for these, lack of time may
be a more significant obstacle to pro-environmental behaviour. In this case,
schemes with fixed and clearly delineated time commitments might prove more
fruitful, because:

... all you need to do is turn up ... [people] need encouragement to get
involved. (Needingworth)

Clearly, promoting institutional change, particularly when directed by local

people, and containing uncertain and occasionally unwelcome outcomes, is a
difficult and risky procedure for local authorities under constant pressure to
justify funding priorities. However, the GFG Sustainable Communities Projects
have begun to make faltering progress along this road (see Smith et al., 1999).
Unfortunately, these advances in local processes have received little recognition
in the national GFG campaign.
Taken together with a growing body of similar research, these findings suggest
that the 'value-action gap' cannot be overcome simply by using an 'information
deficit' model of individual participation, as "empowerment of individuals to act
does not of itself guarantee action without an appropriate institutional location
within which action is located" (Smith & Blanc, 1997, p. 282; see also Burgess
et al., 1998). The implication, for policy makers, is that:

... it is important to redefine the roles and functions of public and

private institutions in ways that legitimate sustainable actions in the
belief that latent public support for environmental protection can be
converted into a widening range of new but customary behaviours.
(Munton, 1997, p. 147)

Beyond Binaries: concepts and discourses of participation and sustainability

In line with this research, and other similar work, which places environmental
values and behaviour within a broader social context, a consensus is emerging
about the need to encourage local, community and public participation in
environmental initiatives. Indeed, "[p]ublic participation has become a key
component in the discourse of sustainable development, particularly at local
level" (Macnaghten & Jacobs, 1997, p. 5).
However, I want to suggest in the final section of this paper that while
academic understandings of the barriers to environmental action are becoming
much more sophisticated, there remains a danger that suggested methods of
overcoming these obstacles simply involve knee-jerk calls for more local,
community or public participation. I argue, using evidence from the Huntingdon-
shire baseline research, that this participation 'discourse' is formed around four
'binary oppositions' which require more critical attention. My intention is not to
develop a full-scale critique, but rather to raise some initial questions for policy
makers and suggest some further avenues of research.
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 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

Local vs. Extra-local

There is a consensus that moves towards sustainability should view 'the local'
as the driving force behind policy at all scales (Local Environment, 1996).
Indeed, it is the raison d'etre of this journal. However, this generates a number
of questions. What are the 'limits' of the local? Different people will construct
their local spaces in different ways, and these visions may conflict: the views of
people who are truly 'local' in that they have lived or worked in an area all their
lives may differ markedly from those people who have recently moved to the
area. Should policy be sensitive to people who value the local area for, say, its
countryside or wildlife, but who actually live elsewhere? In this context, debates
over NIMBYism often reveal deep-seated differences about how the 'local' is
constructed, and expose the danger of parochialism (Murdoch, 1997). In ad-
dition, while problems of global environmental change must be tackled at the
local scale, "in terms of [people's] daily experience as part of the world" (Myers
& Macnaghten, 1998, p. 348), action will be most effective if it is linked to a
more developed understanding of environmental processes at national or global
scale (see Kempton et al., 1995; Hinchliffe, 1997). There may also be difficulties
in linking local participation to wider equity and sustainability goals (Cowell,
1998; Cowell & Owens, 1998).

Public/Lay vs. Expert

The importance of involving public or lay knowledges of the environment in
sustainability initiatives is now widely recognised as a key tenet of sustainability
(see Wynne, 1996). However, there are occasions when the 'public' do not feel,
or want to feel, qualified or well informed enough to take the responsibility for
action. In other contexts, though, they may feel that they are the experts (Eden,
1996). Clearly, identifying 'the expert' is contextual upon the individual situ-
ation and form of knowledge under consideration. Thus the 'public' is better
defined in terms of alienation from dominant political or knowledge regimes in
a particular context. Opposing 'expert' knowledge produced by fixed groups
(such as scientists and politicians) against 'lay' understandings of a pre-defined
'public', whichever form is promoted, is inadequate.

Community vs. Individual

Concerns about equity and community development also increasingly form an
important part of the sustainability agenda. However, the Huntingdonshire
research illustrates that there is no ready-made locus of community waiting for
encouragement. There are different communities that form and disperse around
particular issues and concerns. In Needingworth, all groups believed themselves
to be excluded from what they viewed as the main locus of community. So
newcomers to the village believed that the community centres around old village
institutions and societies, while the older villagers maintained that the com-
munity is being taken over by just those newcomers through control of
271
 J. Blake

organisations such as the school, church and Parish Council. As Dalby &
MacKenzie (1997) explain:
... [c]ommunity may be better understood as a political and social
process rather than a taken-for-granted social geographic en-
tity ... local 'community' ... should not simply be taken for granted as
constituted by a population in situ. (pp. 100-101)
Going for Green itself exhibits a tension between an over-simplistic view of
'community', and the promotion of individual action. Indeed, in the SCPs, it is
clear that 'community' development consists of aggregating individual be-
havioural change. A more institutionalist perspective would recognise that
community development cannot simply be reduced to the sum of its individual
parts (Redclift & Benton, 1994). However, this should not mean abandoning
attempts to promote individual action. Initiatives should be encouraged that are
sensitive to the ways in which different people wish to contribute.17 As shown
in interview responses, some people will not wish to become involved in
community projects, but may still want to contribute as individuals:
[I'm] sceptical of how much a local community group would achieve:
there is a danger of a talking shop with little real power. (Needing-
worth)
[There is the] problem that people don't want to mix, they like their
independence. (Needingworth)

Participation vs. Representation

Discourses of local, public and community can all be brought together with that
of participation to form the nucleus of sustainable development (see UNCED,
1993). However, the concept of participation is notoriously slippery, and can be
invoked to describe anything from basic education to full public control (for
typologies, see Arnstein, 1969; Wilcox, 1994; Davies & Gathorne-Hardy, 1997).
This paper has illustrated how Going for Green exemplifies a dominant policy
discourse which emphasises the need for information that persuades people of
their responsibility to follow prescribed patterns of environmental behaviour,
without giving them any effective tools to enable change. The alternative,
advocated by many of the authors cited above, is to begin to create the
institutional capacity necessary for people to be involved more actively: not only
in the implementation but also in the design and evaluation of sustainability
projects (see also Goodwin, 1998). Achieving this requires that participants
should be allowed greater access to the resources (including information and
political know-how as well as money) that enable effective decision making.
Indeed, many of the barriers to action that respondents identified could be
overcome by an ethic of participation which forms part of a more general move
from representative towards more active and dispersed styles of democratic
governance (see Dryzek, 1990; Smith & Blanc, 1997). As Munton (1997)
concludes,

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 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

... the task of central government is not to produce rules which it then
forces participants to agree to, but instead stimulates [sic] the process
of defining and formulating the rules, thereby allowing participants to
satisfy their interests, (p. 160)
However there is a danger, even with this more radical participation discourse,
that these new forms of democratic governance will, in practice, simply be
framed as local participation, involving little institutional change; and that local
participation will, in effect, merely involve shifting responsibility to individuals
and groups. By implication, this can legitimise inaction amongst other organisa-
tions (in particular local and national government) by allowing them to deny
their own responsibility for environmental improvement. Indeed, one of the
emerging difficulties with some Local Agenda 21 initiatives (which have the aim
of introducing just these sorts of new democratic experiments) is that they are
becoming bogged down in largely internal debates about their strategic position-
ing within the local authority (Voisey et al., 1996; Young, 1997) and can
promote a rather over-prescriptive vision of what 'participation' and 'community
development' might involve, without adequate reference to the very diverse
barriers that affect different individuals and communities as they struggle to
adopt more sustainable lifestyles. As Burgess et al. (1998) conclude:
... the challenge of putting in place local strategies for sustainable
development is ... as much about institutional change as about new
forms of public participation in the planning process, (p. 1458)
Some of the barriers in Figure 2 cannot be overcome simply by people acting
at local level; they require the sharing of power and responsibility by different
individuals and organisations at different spatial scales:
You need somebody to start the ball rolling; then people would follow
up/get involved. (Duck Lane)
If more [was] done by the Council it would encourage residents to
become tidier; it's everybody's responsibility. (Duck Lane)
Some things... should be the Council's responsibility as the local
village wouldn't have the power. (Needingworth)
These comments suggest that local democracy should involve the choice of how
to participate; and participation should involve the choice of how to assume
responsibility.
Hence, developing processes of sustainability at local level will require a
combination of initiatives, invoking both participatory and representative forms
of governance (Selman & Parker, 1997) and involving the negotiation of
partnerships between many different environmental stakeholders: governments,
businesses, universities and environmental organisations as well as individuals
and communities (Smith & Blanc, 1997). Such partnerships should help to
prevent problems of hijacking encountered in some participation schemes
(Selman & Parker, 1997). Although they will involve some measures that
encourage voluntary participation, they may also include some government
regulation, where people see it as appropriate:
273
 J. Blake

... [we] may need to impose some things from above... the Govern-
ment has got to lead the way and the system doesn't allow it.
(Needingworth)

Conclusion
In recent years, policy makers have increasingly responded to environmental
challenges within the discourse of sustainable development, which emphasises
the possibility of tackling environmental problems without major change to
social and political institutions (Hajer, 1995). However, this paper illustrates
that as policy turns from raising environmental awareness to promoting pro-
environmental behaviour, possibly involving lifestyle change, difficulties with
this approach begin to become more evident. Tensions between national and
local aspects of the Going for Green initiative illustrate that the 'value-action
gap' cannot be overcome simply by invoking an 'information deficit' model of
participation, informed by a social psychological attitude-behaviour model.
Research findings from the Huntingdonshire SCP contribute to a growing
consensus of recent work on environmental values and behaviour. Drawing on
broader social and institutional theory, this research suggests that policy must be
sensitive to the everyday contexts in which individual intentions and actions are
constrained by socioeconomic and political institutions.
This has important implications for national and international policy initiatives
concerned with encouraging pro-environmental behavioural change. Many re-
searchers and local practitioners are calling for new institutions based around
local, community or public participation. Yet there is a danger that one set of
generalised appeals is being replaced by another, and that while responsibility is
being passed to individuals, there has, as yet, been little change to modes of
democratic governance or dominant institutional structures. Initiatives that seek
to work towards the creation of more sustainable communities at local level must
pay more critical attention to the meanings of 'local', 'public', 'community' and
'participation' in different circumstances. This suggests that greater emphasis
must be placed on the negotiation of partnerships that are sensitive to these
variations, and which involve a more equitable distribution of responsibility
between different environmental stakeholders.

Acknowledgements
This paper is based on research conducted with Claudia Carter in 1996 as part
of the Huntingdonshire Going for Green Sustainable Communities Project. I am
grateful to both Claudia and the many people in Huntingdonshire who con-
tributed to the research. It also forms part of wider research for my PhD thesis
(Blake, 1999), funded by the ESRC (award number R00429534031). An earlier
version of this paper was presented to the session 'Researching public under-
standings of the environment', RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Guildford, 7
January 1998.1 am grateful to the participants in that session for their comments
and suggestions. I would also like to thank Jacquie Burgess, Harriet Bulkeley,
Susan Owens, Margaret Newby, Stephen Clibbery and one anonymous referee
274
 Overcoming the 'Value-Action Gap' in Environmental Policy

for their comments on earlier drafts, and Owen Tucker for his help with the
figures. I am particularly grateful to Joe Smith and Anna Davies for their
comments and for ongoing discussions about the issues raised in this paper. The
views expressed, and any errors which remain, are my own.

Notes
[1] In this paper, I use the phrase 'value-action gap' to signify in general terms the differences between what
people say and what people do, and 'environmental concerns' to refer to respondents* specific attitudes
to environmental issues. I recognise that terminological confusion is rife in this area, with different
researchers variously referring to 'attitudes', 'opinions', 'concerns', 'worries', 'values', 'beliefs', 'ac-
tions', and 'behaviour', often with reference to similar things. I argue elsewhere (Blake, 1999) that
constructing fixed categories on the basis of distinctions between these terms is likely to be a confusing
and often fruitless exercise.
[2] This is Going for Green's response to the Government's recent sustainable development consultation
paper, Opportunities for Change. During the course of this paper I frequently refer to it, and directly
quote from it, as it offers the most recent and coherent statement of national GFG experiences and
research findings. This document was sent to the SCP research teams for comment two days before the
submission deadline (29 May 1998). As a result of concern from some researchers (particularly from
Lancaster and Cambridge) that their findings were not included, or properly represented, the report was
re-edited at the last minute. This involved a redrafted summary, which included greater recognition of the
SCP research, and some cutting and pasting from researchers' letters to GFG. However, the language and
structure of the main body of the report remained the same, and I refer to it here to indicate the general
approach of national GFG. In themselves, the disagreements over the content of the report provide further
evidence of communication difficulties between National GFG and the SCP researchers.
[3] For a broader account of the tensions between national GFG and the different SCPs, see Smith et al.
(1999).
[4] This was a code (particularly aimed at children) that aimed to reduce pedestrian involvement in road
traffic accidents by encouraging greater individual vigilance when crossing roads.
[5] One important example is the work of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (see
ICLEI, 1998).
[6] This paper focuses on the specific experiences of the Going for Green initiative, which has, to date,
received much less attention in the academic literature. For an appraisal of LA21, see Young (1997);
Voisey et al. (1996); Tuxworth (1996); Selman & Parker (1997); Selman (1996).
[7] I am grateful to Anna Davies for this point, raised at an ESRC funded workshop held at Lancaster
University, 22-23 January 1999. The workshop was arranged to share the research experiences of five
different university teams working with the Going for Green SCPs.
[8] See Blake & Carter (1997) for a comprehensive report on all aspects of the baseline study.
[9] These quotations may sometimes be clipped grammatically as they are drawn from note-taking rather
than fully transcribed conversation. Respondents are identified by the community in which they lived.
[10] The specifics of what different respondents mean by 'environmental concern' and 'environmental action',
are discussed elsewhere (Blake & Carter, 1997; Rutherford, 1997; Blake, 1999).
[11] The most pertinent example of this is transport. Government research has shown that, despite 80% of
people agreeing that a lot more could be done to resolve the problem of traffic congestion, and 60%
considering using alternative transport to the car, only 25% claim to have actually done this in practice
(DoE, 1992).
[12] For a review of US approaches to social and environmental psychology, see Baron & Byrne (1997) and
Bell et al. (1996) respectively. For a European perspective, which emphasises more rhetorical and
discursive approaches, see Howitt et al. (1989). More applied literature reviews can be found in
O'Riordan (1981) and Blake (1999).
[13] This approach is variously termed 'new institutionalism' (O'Riordan & Jordan, 1996; March & Olsen,
1989) 'social realism' (Harrison et al., 1996) and has many parallels with the structurationist perspective
developed by Anthony Giddens (see Giddens, 1984).
[14] See, for example, Harrison & Burgess (1994); Harrison et al. (1996); Kempton et al. (1995); Hinchliffe
(1996); Macnaghten et al. (1995); Eden (1993).

275
 J. Blake
[15] For a detailed comparison of different theoretical and methodological approaches to environmental
values, and a more extensive literature review, see Blake (1999); Guerrier et al. (1995); Foster (1997).
[16] For example, one of the most important social norms that prevents more environmental action is the
social status of the car as compared with forms of public transport (e.g. buses and trains).
[17] One such initiative is Global Action Plan (UK) which, although sharing some of the assumptions of
Going for Green, uses a more sophisticated set of tools for encouraging individual behavioural change
(see Hobson, 1999, for an initial assessment).

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