Being Green: Leveraging Behavioral Decision Research to Drive Sustainability in the Surf Community

Climate change is an invisible, diffuse, and long-term threat that requires individual behavior change on a global scale in order to help mitigate its effects. However, people have a difficult time matching their behavior to their attitudes despite having good intentions. This attitude-behavior gap is especially large in sustainability issues. Using an online survey, this project partnered with non-profit organization Sustainable Surf and specifically focuses on the surf community. It leverages the fields of decision science and behavioral economics to understand why the contradiction between attitudes and behavior exists and how to address it. The nature of surfing provides a direct relationship with the ocean, and our data shows that surfers are more likely to engage in climate-friendly behaviors than those who do not surf. However, they still face barriers to action and need help making better decisions for themselves and the environment. Surf industry stakeholders, such as brands, surfboard shapers, media, and competition platforms have the greatest potential to shape these decisions towards achieving personal and community benefits. Surfing as a sport also has the ability to influence those who have never surfed before but have some connection to the culture, either through a desire to learn or an engagement with surf competitions. Surfers and the surf industry can set an example of widespread behavior change, which can potentially lead to policy change. To help surf stakeholders catalyze this transition, we have identified a list of potential strategies based in behavioral decision research at the end of this report