A Different Kind of ‘Green’ Motivation in Environmental Campaigns

A person is faced with two environmental campaigns to promote energy conservation—one advertises economic gains, and the other environmental gains. Conventional wisdom would say the former frame is more likely to motivate the desired behavior change. This is based on the assumptions that individuals are purely motivated by economic gains and that any campaigns should target and exploit this self-interest.

In their paper, “Comparing the effectiveness of monetary versus moral motives in environmental campaigning,” Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman, and Postmes provide evidence to the contrary. Their results demonstrate that individuals are also motivated to maintain a positive self-image consistent with internal moral standards. Thus, in situations where economic gains are small, environmental appeals that preserve self-image are more effective than economic appeals at eliciting the desired behavior change.

In the first experiment, the authors test how an environmental or economic appeal would affect an individual’s self-image. The authors asked drivers to imagine going to a gas station and seeing one of two randomly assigned signs. The first said, “Want to save money? Check your car’s tire pressure!” and the second said, “Want to protect the environment? Check your car’s tire pressure!” Participants were then asked to rank (scores ranged from Bad=1 to Good=7 including all whole number scores in between) how complying with the recommended activity would make them feel. Under the assumptions that individuals seek to preserve their self-image and that choosing a “green” action positively reinforces that self-image, the authors predicted that participants would report feeling better about complying with the environmental appeal versus the economic one. Their results support this prediction with an average score of 5.66 for those exposed to the environmental campaign versus an average of 5.15 for the other group. While both scores represent positive deviations from the neutral score of 4, compliance with the environmental appeal elicited a significantly more positive effect on self-image than did the economic appeal.

The second experiment added a priming step before the survey to activate the salience of the participants’ self-image. One group was instructed to circle all self-related pronouns (e.g., I, me, myself) after reading a short story, whereas the other was instructed to circle neutral pronouns (e.g., the, it, a). The authors found that priming participants significantly increased the difference in positive feelings between the environmental and economic appeals, controlling for individual attitudes toward the environment. These results further support the previous conclusion that individuals are influenced by the salience of self-image and seek to respond in ways consistent with that image.

Finally, the authors explored whether perceived positive feelings from compliance could affect behavior. To do so, they displayed one of four signs at a U.S. gas station, each containing an environmental, economic, safety, or a neutral appeal encouraging patrons to check their tire pressure. Each sign had coupons for free tire pressure checks. After 22 observation days, 11 coupons were taken from the environmental sign, seven from the control, five from the safety, and none from the economic sign. Although the total number of coupons taken was small, the analysis showed that the economic appeal resulted in significantly less compliance than either the environmental or control. In this situation, the economic appeal seems to have had a negative effect on patron compliance since no coupons were taken when the economic signs were posted.

In their simple experiments, the authors demonstrate an important aspect of human behavior—people are motivated to preserve a preconceived self-image and seek to make decisions that align with their moral standards. The authors certainly do not suggest that all environmental campaigns should switch to only environmental and social appeals. In cases where the potential economic gains or losses are especially high, economic appeals are still effective in shifting behavior. However, for many environmental campaigns, such as carpooling and recycling, this research suggests that using environmental appeals—exploiting peoples’ desires to preserve their self-images—may be more effective at shifting behaviors since monetary gains are small. Even more powerful are the potential successes from employing both self-image and economics appeals to shift behavior. Examples of this already exist in companies like Opower, which use both types of appeals to increase energy conservation.

Article Source: J. W. Bolderdijk, L. Steg, E. S. Geller, P. K. Lehmann, and T. Postmes, “Comparing the effectiveness of monetary versus moral motives in environmental campaigning,” Nature Climate Change 3 (2013): 413-16.

Feature Photo: cc/(net_efekt)