Greener gardens through deeper understanding of behavioural change. Steenbreek analysed.

Greening gardens is an essential part of working towards a sustainably green city. Of course, the cooperation of residents is essential for this. Together with colleagues from Wageningen UR, Associate professor Derk Jan Stobbelaar has examined the factors that play a role in residents' decisions to green or pave their gardens. These factors have been incorporated into a ‘behavioural model for garden greening’ and applied to Steenbreek’s activities. Steenbreek is an organisation that has been working for many years on greening gardens. The model can be used to show what makes Steenbreek successful and where improvements can be made. Among other things, this makes it clear that there are people who do want to go green, but feel, for example, that they cannot. By helping precisely this group to remove the barriers, a very targeted and relatively quick greening process can be achieved.

The study is published in Sustainability as part of the Green Urban Development special edition "Greening the City: How to Get Rid of Garden Pavement! The ‘Steenbreek’ Program as a Dutch Example"