Designing a toolset for activating citizens as stewards of climate proof gardening

Gardens represent an underexplored but substantial part of our urbanized areas. Moreover, they hold significant potential to work on climate robust living areas. This PhD focuses on the social side of the socio-ecological garden system as its understanding is crucial to develop policies focussing on the activation of the strategic potential of gardens. The aim is to design a toolset for engaging citizens as stewards of climate proof gardening by inducing sustainable behavioural change. The research focuses on three aspects: (1) drivers and motivations of climate resilient gardening practices, e.g. attitudinal and behavioural patterns of garden owners; (2) evidence-based framework on the effectiveness of different behavioural interventions and techniques to motivate garden owners towards climate resilient gardening, e.g. effectiveness of behavioural interventions; and (3) the development of a policy toolbox for local and regional governments to mobilize citizens towards climate resilient gardening. To collect data, the citizen science platform “MijnTuinlab” will be used to launch an online survey and online survey experiments, in combination with in-depth interviews (for example in neighbourhoods). To reduce a possible bias on the representativeness by using “MijnTuinlab”, a socio-economic assessment allows to assess which target groups are underrepresented. Targeted outreach campaigns will be set-up to enhance participation of underrepresented target groups. Behavioural change theory and pro-environment measurement tools are combined. Behavioural interventions to be tested include persuasive messages and behavioural interventions such as green nudges and boosts. Combining the insights of (1) and (2) with insights from participatory citizen science projects, research on citizens’ co-production and behavioural public policy, a set of policy guidelines and recommendations will be synthesized and assembled into a toolbox for local and regional governments. This toolbox must allow governments to increases their behavioural climate policy capacity to upscale and sustain citizens’ engagement to act as stewards of climate proof gardening in their local community.