Return to Academic Venture Fund
2014: Expanding Bird Habitats at Home
What would convince a homeowner to replace a lawn with a no-mow wildflower meadow, eliminate chemical fertilizers, or take other steps to encourage birdlife? This team thinks that a combination of social group influence and carefully framed environmental messages will support behavioral change. The researchers will use YardMap, an online social network hosted by Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, to track how environmentally friendly behaviors spread among social groups and what kinds of messages persuade the most people to adopt practices mutually sustainable to humans and birds.