Environmental Behavior Change

Hi!

I'm currently developing research on principles most effective in guiding the development of environmental communication aimed at promoting environmental behavior change in the community. My focus is on drawing up a framework which combines perspectives from Communication Theory and Responsible Environmental Behavior that can be used to help assessing the development of environmental education and communication programs that focus on behavior change. The Responsible Environmental Behavior component is mostly based on Hungerford's work. However, I'm still thinking on the communication theories I could draw on to complete the scope of the research. I have gone through some articles and books about the application of communication theories on the development of health reach out programs focusing on behavior change. Most drawing on Information Processing Theory and Message Effects Theories. I was wondering if you could recommend communication theories more related to dealing with this issue (behavior change), that I could apply on my research. My intention is to apply this framework to assess the effectivenesss of the communication programs of two case studies, one in Australia and the other in NZ. After this initial phase (building up the framework and testing it against these two cases), the idea is to apply it on the development and assessment of environmental communication programs on the Brazilian Amazon Basin. Specificly on the region of the Brazilian agricultural frontier, where soyabeans, and lately sugarcane cash crops have been advancing towards the native rainforest at a rate which only in the last decade was almost twice of that registered until the begining of the 70's. Articles on the issue would also be of great help. Looking forward to receiving a reply.

All the best,
Tiago Rodrigues.