The riverside communities devised a community-based program to negotiate with the local government to avoid eviction. As an intervention package,-which aims to upgrade the living environment and increase the residents’ pro-environmental behaviour-, this program consists of organization and information, combined with social interaction, commitment and feedback performance. Intensive observations were used to examine the effectiveness of the program to environmental behaviour change and upgrading settlement. The findings reveal that having a common objective of renovation is the most influential variable in motivating individuals to increase environmentally friendly behaviour on the upgrading environment. Keywords: behavior change, community-based, social interaction © 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.