Solution Search: Climate Change Needs Behavior Change is a global crowdsourcing competition designed to identify, reward, and spotlight innovative approaches to curbing climate change by changing people’s behaviors. Changing people’s behavior can be hard but not impossible. Solutions to climate change exist. If we can better understand the insights behind human decision-making, we can spark widespread change in the way people consume natural resources and ultimately lead to the environmental changes the earth needs.

We seek to identify promising approaches that have successfully transitioned consumer behaviors that affect greenhouse gas emissions and natural resource use. While traditional approaches often rely primarily or exclusively on economic or regulatory incentives, this contest will focus on leveraging the power of emotions, changing social norms, and making green behaviors easier in efforts to benefit the environment, conservation, and sustainability initiatives in innovative ways. This competition ties into our recent Fuller Symposium on Behavior Change. Jeremy Bailenson’s work with virtual reality exemplifies the kind of innovative solutions we hope to find. You can read more about his work in his new book, Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do.

The competition is open to nonprofits, companies, governments and other organizations that have developed and implemented approaches to helping consumers adopt more climate-friendly behaviors. The six organizations sponsoring this competition are Rare, Conservation International, National Geographic, The Nature Conservancy, United Nations Development Programme, and World Wildlife Fund.

Do you have a successful strategy for helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint through behavior change? If so, you could win $25,000, a workshop in Washington DC with fellow change-makers, and the opportunity to share your solution globally.