Tessa Vaendel,
Noor Debets
In line with the analysis of last week’s required readings, wherein the socio-technical system elaborates that next to technical input the sociologic system is on subject of the environmental change too, this week’s focus will be on the environmental people and their behavior. Change lies not only by policy developments but in individual behavioral patterns (Venhoeven et al., 2013). Since sustainable change is at the centre of our interest, the change of individual behavioral patterns is of importance too. Pro-environmental people on Texel formulated a 2065-goal wherein the island has to be fully self-sufficient in 2065. Therefore a transition in individual behavior, of pro- and non-pro environmental people, has to be made.
Focussing on the pro-environmental type of person he/she places, as we all conclude, the higher goal of a sustainable world above his own well-being. As Venhoeven et al. denotes it is “perfectly possible to adopt lifestyles and technologies that improve happiness and reduce human damage to the environment at the same time” (2013, p.2). But since not everyone on Texel has pro-environmental behavior it seems that not everyone has the same perception of this positive aspects of this higher goal. Following the sub-system, pro-environmental behaviour could be a synonym for sustainable lifestyle, or at least having a sustainable lifestyle includes pro-environmental behaviour. Thus a sustainable lifestyle could also be perceived as difficult, annoying and possibly negative for the quality of life.
In sum, and according to the sub-topic of Sustainable Lifestyle as we see it, Planet locals feel an increase of well-being by environmental behavior while Profit locals feel their well-being decreased with pro-environmental behavior. Since everyone tries to improve the quality of life, Verhoeven et al. brought these two together, analyzed the term well-being and came across with well-being from a hedonistic perspective and well-being via an eudaimonic view. What influences who and vice versa. It is of importance to analyse this, when trying to improve the sustainable lifestyle, since, with the diversity of people, a similarity needs to be found, or at least a point wherein everyone can be brought together.
Before the analysis is set out, the term of well-being needs to be clarified. Wherein the hedonistic well-being is about the maximum amount of pleasure both on physical as cognitive ground. In contrast, the eudaimonic well-being is about living well and has less to do with pleasures moment like the hedonistic approach (Venhoeven et al. 2013).
We noted similarity with these concepts to our lifestyle types. The local profit person aligned with the Hedonistic well being person and the local planet as the eudaimonic type. The hedonic well-being can been seen as term about the short-term well-being. Compared to a sustainable lifestyle, this could also lead to short-term well-being, since people would be better motivated to have a pro-environmental behaviour. The eudaimonic well-being is, as it seems, about the long-term well-being and truly intrinsically motivated to act pro-environmentally. When having a sustainable lifestyle one is already aware of this eudaimonic well-being, so this should be stimulated in order to increase the number of people with a sustainable lifestyle within Texel.
Citing Venhoeven when is concluded that pro-environmental well-being does not decrease well being “this does not warrant that pro-environmental behaviour will thus have a positive influence on well-being. The discussed literature suggests that for pro-environmental behaviour to lead to an increase in (eudaimonic) well-being, it is important that people see pro-environmental behaviour as the right thing to do, and have the feeling they want and freely choose to perform this behaviour.” (2013, p. 10)
When implementing this result, it seems to be better to cut-down and reframe big goals into smaller ones. By then, people feel some kind of progress and even though the hedonistic-lifestyle doesn't immediately matches with the pro-environmental behaviour it is at least a small step forward to bring both groups together. These both groups, so to speak, complement with the Profit Locals and Planet Locals in Texel.
Besides the fact that well-being in itself is an important goal to reach, it is interesting to what extend people steer towards well-being. This steering towards well-being is defined by Nevejan as the definition of presence (2015). She noted that presence design is metadesign which is a conceptual framework wherein new forms of collaborative design can take place. The YUPTA framework is such a method wherein presence can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives, since people connect to one another in many kind of ways (Nevejan, 2015).