Balancing environmental sustainability with the social goals of scientific organisations: a ‘COM-B’ behaviour change strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international scientific conferences, meetings and educational events

Abstract

Objective To estimate the environmental impact of two exemplar in-person academic events and, using the COM-B behaviour change framework of capability, opportunity, motivation, identify strategies that could be applied by organisers and participants to reduce this impact. Methods We calculated the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from two European PhD summer schools, one geographically peripheral and one central, organised by a European academic society, the European Academy of Nursing Science. We used participant distances from home university cities to the event sites to calculate individual GHG travel emissions. We incorporated on-site emissions into per-participant totals, and examined the relative contributions of travel and on-site factors to individual and total event emissions. We calculated the financial costs of individual participant attendance. Results Our exemplar events contributed between 41 tonnes and 99 tonnes CO₂e emissions per event, a per-participant mean between 0.324, (SD 0.173) and 0.724, (SD 0.263) tonnes, representing 2 to 5.5 times the daily per-person European average. Distance from home was the largest contributor to emissions, with the peripheral event associated with 2.5 times the emissions of the central event, driven by aviation as flying was the only viable means to travel long distances. On-site emissions were no more than 26% of the total event emissions profiles. Costs were similar for both events. Implications Whilst organisers can provide participants with the opportunity to travel shorter distances and to sites where ground-based travel options are available, participants may not act on opportunities unless their capabilities and motivation are enhanced. We describe a behaviour change programme, structured using the COM-B model, that identifies strategies for organisers and participants to use to reduce the GHG emissions of academic events. A multi-component behavioural change programme including environmental change, enablement, education, incentivisation and persuasion is likely to be more successful than single strand approaches.