An application of the transtheoretical model to climate change prevention: Validation of the climate change stages of change questionnaire in middle school students and their schoolteachers

Abstract

Certain behaviors, especially when adopted by a majority, can help limit the magnitude of climate change. In this cross-sectional study, the stages of change from the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) are applied to environmentally-significant behavior. We develop and test a new scale – the Climate Change Stages of Change Questionnaire (CCSOCQ) – for measuring five discrete stages involved in changing behavior to address climate change (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance). In total, 3,469 middle-school students (M_age = 13.4) and 347 schoolteachers completed the CCSOCQ and a measure of engagement with sustainable development. Analyses indicated the CCSOCQ captured the five stages outlined by the TTM and had adequate psychometric properties. Further supporting predictions of the TTM, engagement with sustainable development was lowest in the precontemplation stage and highest in the action stage. We conclude the TTM has potential for describing how and why people alter their behavior to address climate change.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1998382 .

Keywords:

• transtheoretical model
• stage of change
• behavior change
• climate change
• psychometrics

CRediT author statement

Richard Inman: Conceptualization, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Paulo Moreira: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. Sara Faria: Investigation, Data curation. Marta Araújo. Investigation. Data curation. Diana Cunha: Investigation. Susana Pedras: Investigation. Joana Correia Lopes Investigation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

Notes

1 For interested readers, the ten processes of change included in the TTM are: Consciousness raising (finding and learning new information to support behavior change), Dramatic relief (experiencing negative emotions linked to behavioral risk), Self-reevaluation (understanding that behavior change is an important part of one’s identity), Environmental reevaluation (realizing the negative impact of undesirable behavior or positive impact of desirable behavior on one’s social or physical environment), Self-liberation (making a firm commitment to change), Helping relationships (seeking and using social support for change), Counterconditioning (replacing undesirable behaviors and cognitions with more desirable ones), Reinforcement management (increasing rewards for positive behavior change and decreasing rewards for negative behavior), Stimulus control (removing cues that stimulate engagement in undesirable behavior and adding cues for desirable behavior), and Social liberation (realizing that social norms are changing in the direction of the desirable behavior). Research has demonstrated a systematic relationship between one’s SoC and the processes being applied, with earlier stages dependent on cognitive, affective, and evaluative processes (e.g. consciousness raising, environmental reevaluation) and later stages dependent on conditioning, environmental controls, and support. Such differences have clear practical implications for interventions (Prochaska, Redding, et al. 2008).

2 Teachers reported that some of their students did not finish the full survey in the allocated time (the duration of a class), and no additional time was provided to these individuals to finish.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Portuguese Funds by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) [grant numbers PTD/CED-EDG/31615/2017].