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In this paper, the authors present the Awareness Behaviour Intervention Action (ABIA) framework, a new system developed by them to support environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB).

Previous ERB programmes have failed to deliver lasting results; they have not appropriately understood and provided systems to address ERB (Costanzo et al., 1986). The ABIA framework has been developed in line with behavioural studies in other disciplines. A preliminary pilot study has been carried out with social housing residents in order to understand the framework's efficacy.

The ABIA framework enables a better understanding of current attitudes to environmental issues and provides support for ERB alongside technological interventions employed to promote carbon reduction.

The ABIA framework could be tested on individuals and communities in a variety of socio-economic, political and cultural contexts. This will help unpack how it can impact on the behaviours of individuals and communities including stakeholders.

This type of research and the ABIA framework developed from it are crucial if the EU is to reduce is domestic carbon footprint and if the UK is to meet its pledge to become the first country in the world in which all new homes from 2016 are to be zero carbon.

The framework encourages both individual and community engagement in solving of sustainability issues.

There are few studies that have developed a framework which can be used in practice to support behavioural change for adaptation to sustainable living in low- or zero-carbon homes.

According to our favourite but unreliable history book, James I slobbered at the mouth and was “a bad king”, but it is somewhat doubtful whether this is a fair summing up of this frequently foolish monarch. He had his points, and he certainly had opinions he did not hesitate to voice. On the smoking of tobacco he wrote: “It is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs …” and much more besides, to the same effect, but he was quite unsuccessful in checking the growth of a habit (pleasant or pernicious, as you prefer) that during the last half‐century has reached dimensions far exceeding anything dreamed of by the wisest fool in Christendom. Right up to the present time, however, there has persisted in various places and among various classes of people, the feeling that there was something inherently near‐evil in tobacco smoking and there have long been organized movements to discourage the habit, although the grounds for these activities have often been rather vague. Smoking was said to stunt a boy's growth, it was a waste of money, and anyway it was something done purely for pleasure and must therefore by Victorian standards be “wrong”, or at least not quite proper.