Encouraging Sustainable Behavior

Psychology and the Environment

Hans C.M. van Trijp

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136496356
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Increasingly it is being recognized that consumer behavior may be a key trigger in the march toward sustainable development. Several lines of psychological theory and approaches have been developed relatively independently, each of which may provide major implications and action points on how consumers might be moved toward more sustainable behavior. This book is the first that brings together this variety of perspectives and theoretical angles around the common ambition of sustainable development.

The contributors are all leading social scientists in the field of consumer behavior who met the challenge to sketch out their theoretical perspectives, but also to go beyond their normal theorizing and think out of the box in order to show how these theoretical perspectives might be made actionable in terms of key managerial and policy perspectives toward sustainable development.

The result is a book that shows a wealth of information and approaches the question of how to encourage sustainable behavior from a myriad of divergent perspectives. This should stimulate scientists and policy-makers alike to find similarities, differences, and synergies between state-of-the-art psychological thinking about how to most effectively stimulate sustainable consumer behavior.

Section 1

Introduction

1

Multiple Selves in Sustainable Consumption

An Introduction

Yana R. Avramova and Hans C.M. van Trijp

Sustainable development is one of the key challenges that world economies are facing both in the commercial and in the public policy domain. The latest United Nations (UN) projections on population growth show that by the year 2050 the world population will likely have reached nine billion people with much of the growth taking place in developing and emerging countries. At the same time, the commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals sets targets for increased social and environmental performance related to sustainable development worldwide. It is obvious that these ambitions cannot be achieved within the current consumption patterns or within the current marketing and production practices. There is a strong and global need to move consumption and production practices into the direction of more balanced and sustainable development.

Although technology in sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics can make an important contribution to sustainable development, it is increasingly recognized that consumer behavior also plays an important role in the advancement of sustainable development.

Creating consumer demand for sustainable products and services sets important challenges. To some extent, it can be portrayed as a classical social dilemma as the protection of the common good requires individuals to behave in ways that diverge from their traditional individual utility maximization. What is good for society in the long run is not necessarily the best option for the individual in the short term. Reassuringly, consumers seem to be increasingly concerned with sustainability and increasingly aware of the environmental impact of their individual purchase and consumption decisions. Unfortunately, for the majority of consumers these positive attitudes toward sustainable development still translate only weakly into actual purchase and consumption behaviors. Thus, there is a discrepancy between what consumers say and what they actually do: Although they “talk green,” they do not necessarily “walk green.”

The discrepancy between good intentions and poor behavior has intrigued academic researchers from diverse scientific disciplines. It has been viewed as a particular instance of the traditional attitude–behavior discrepancy, or as a manifestation of the conflict between our different selves (angels vs. demons/citizens vs. consumers) and has even been related to the activity of distinct (more impulsive vs. more considerate) brain areas. These different theoretical perspectives have largely developed independently with cross-fertilization being virtually absent. This is unfortunate, as much can be learned from closer interaction and integration.

On November 18–19, 2010, we were in the fortunate position to facilitate such closer interaction and integration. Supported by Transforum, a Dutch innovation program on sustainable development, we organized a symposium on “Multiple Selves and Sustainable Development” in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It enabled us to selectively invite some of the world’s leading researchers, together with policy-makers and business representatives, to share their scientific and more applied perspectives. Each of the invited speakers was explicitly asked to present his or her scientific perspective on the issue, to link it to the specific application area of sustainable development, and to further reflect on how this particular perspective might inform intervention efforts of the commercial and policy sectors in promoting sustainable consumer behavior. This book reflects those perspectives from a range of different disciplines such as social psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, consumer behavior, and marketing.

In Chapter 2, de Jonge, Fischer, and van Trijp discuss the commercial challenges inherent in sustainable development from a social marketing perspective. As marketing is fundamentally grounded in the concept of value exchange, the social marketing approach suggests that sustainable behavior can be enhanced through the motivation, ability, and opportunity routes. In other words, a key challenge lies in positioning sustainable behavior as aligning with consumers’ self-interest (motivation), thereby ensuring that this self-interest is recognized and understood (ability) and can be acted upon (opportunity). Along these lines, the social marketing perspective provides a transparent structure along which intervention strategies to promote sustainable development can be designed. For instance, self-interest can be enhanced if sustainable products also provide superior product quality (e.g., animal-friendly produced steaks with enhanced functionality in terms of tenderness), but perceived self-interest can also emerge from social distinctiveness or adherence to group norms. One implication of the social marketing perspective is that sustainable behavior is more likely to occur if barriers that withhold consumers from expressing their good intentions into behavior are removed. An effective strategy might be to make sustainable behavior options easily available and easily accessible, probably even the default option.

In Chapter 3, Geoffrey Miller takes on an evolutionary approach to understanding and promoting sustainable consumption. He argues that there is nothing in our evolutionary history and genetic disposition that would favor sustainable consumption for the sake of its sustainability. In his view, people use sustainable consumption as a means to display or “signal” their superiority to others. He argues that those engaging in conspicuous consumption of sustainable products probably do so to signal to potential mates, friends, and kin that they have the capacity to “handle it” (analogous to the male peacock’s tail, which is a costly signaling device to attract mates and to deter rivals). Miller proposes that marketing efforts aimed at enhancing sustainable consumption should thus exploit our “trait signaling instincts,” namely our tendency to signal to others that we possess highly valued traits, such as high intelligence, agreeableness, conscientiousness, etc. Miller’s perspective suggests several routes to promoting sustainable consumption. For one thing, marketing efforts should not make “green” easily accessible, cheap, and popular, and certainly not the default. Rather, the “green” should be kept costly, elitist, and exclusive for the sake of preserving its signaling potential.

In Chapter 4, Lindenberg and Steg focus on the normative aspects of sustainable consumption. They argue that the normative goal to act pro-environmentally is relatively weak, and often much more abstract, as compared to the competing hedonic and gain goals (e.g., to have fun, to pay less). Thus, strategies for inducing sustainable behavior need to be backed up by consistent social support aimed at strengthening the normative goal. The authors argue that norm-guided behavior (i.e., compliance with the norm) can be stimulated by making the sustainability norm chronically more accessible and by making the gain and hedonic goals compatible with the normative goal. They further propose that self-regulation and pro-environmental behavior can be enhanced through providing consumers with customized comparative feedback (e.g., what similar others do), and by ensuring that descriptive norm information (e.g., traces in the environment indicating what is generally accepted and done) supports the norm.

In Chapter 5, Goldstein and Dinner elaborate on the potential of default-setting, well-established in many other domains, as an approach to promoting sustainable consumption. Defaults can be a powerful tool for guiding sustainable behavior, as consumers tend to perceive the default as indicative of majority preferences and as a cue for source recommendation and endorsement. Moreover, the otherwise high transaction costs of information search and switching to sustainable product options may be substantially reduced. That is, “green defaults” (e.g., factory-set configurations, smart consideration sets in household energy plans, customized feedback and reminders for appliance inspections, etc.) may “nudge” consumers to make more sustainable choices by ensuring that any extra time and effort—that often deter consumers from making greener choices—would be associated with opting out of (rather than with opting into) the pro-environmental default. Goldstein and Dinner provide some specific guidelines on default-setting that could help policy-makers and marketers to identify the most appropriate default configuration for a specific context (e.g., reverting, persistent, updating defaults). The critical variable here is the relative importance of the particular issue or policy at the individual and the societal level.

A complementary perspective is provided by Meijers, Noordewier, and Avramova in Chapter 6, which focuses on the consequences of behaving sustainably. Meijers and co-authors review evidence suggesting that although people may sometimes continue to behave sustainably after an initial sustainable act (carry-over effects), this is not always the case. In fact, engaging in sustainable behavior may sometimes lead to less sustainable behavior later on (balance effects)—a pattern that is in line with findings from the licensing and goal-pursuit literatures. That is, engaging in sustainable behavior makes people feel good about themselves, giving them a sense of having “done enough” in this domain, and thereby licensing them to behave unsustainably later. Similarly, achieving (rather than pursuing) the pre-set goal to behave sustainably pushes this goal into the background, thus decreasing the chances for subsequent goal-congruent behavior. Meijers et al. suggest that an important determinant of whether carry-over or balance effects ensue is self-view: When people have a sustainable self-view (or when such a view is temporarily activated), they are more likely to exhibit carry-over effects and thus consistently behave sustainably (i.e., be their sustainable selves). The authors further propose that the social labeling technique can be used to induce a sustainable self-view and thus elicit continued sustainable behavior, and that it can be efficiently incorporated in mass communication, package labeling, and product slogans.

In Chapter 7, Fujita, Clark, and Freitas build on construal level theory, arguing that the ways in which environmental issues are perceived and cognitively construed may affect the behaviors that people engage in. According to the construal level perspective, sustainability concerns are construed much more globally and abstractly than other, more immediate concerns and goals. The authors suggest that efforts promoting pro-environmental decisions and actions can benefit from either of two strategies. On the one hand, persuasive messages can be framed in such a way as to highlight the concrete features and benefits of sustainable options, thereby making distant and abstract concerns more immediate and relevant. Alternatively, persuasive communication may aim to induce a more abstract mindset, or a higher level of construal, in consumers, thereby promoting consideration of more global and abstract issues and ultimately leading to more environment-friendly decisions. Either way, the fit between consumers’ level of construal and the persuasive message is crucial, with higher consistency yielding better results.

Chapter 8, by Travis Proulx, presents yet another approach inspired by theorizing and evidence from the field of social cognition. According to Proulx, the general level of concern for the environment is rather low, as compared to the concern raised by the ongoing economic crisis, since the latter is much more immediate, concrete, and visibly impactful. Taking an existentialist perspective, Proulx argues that people respond to threat, such as an impending environmental catastrophe, by reaffirming their core values and beliefs. Evidence from research in this tradition suggests that unexpected or threatening events challenge people’s basic need for meaning, structure, and consistency, thus causing what Proulx calls “feeling of the absurd.” As a consequence, people are more likely to stick to whatever is familiar and certain (even when it is not as positive), and to maintain the status quo. Along these lines, Proulx proposes that sustainability-oriented initiatives will be more successful if (1) environmental problems are perceived as more concrete, immediate, and economic, and if (2) there is a “sustainable status quo.” In other words, people should be able to reaffirm their beliefs through engaging in sustainable (rather than unsustainable) behavior.

A closely related perspective is presented in Chapter 9 by Banfield, Shepherd, and Kay, who suggest that confronting people with global and massive, hardly comprehensible, environmental problems may be threatening and may thus cause people to maintain the status quo, thereby impeding behavior change. Banfield et al. review evidence from research on system justification and compensatory control, showing that when people feel helpless to solve environmental problems, they also avoid potentially useful (but still threatening) information regarding these problems. Moreover, the lack of personal control strengthens faith and trust in the system, as personified by God, the government, and other institutions. As a consequence, people feel a weaker sense of personal responsibility, which ultimately leads to less action and behavior change. According to Banfield et al., sustainability efforts should thus aim at providing people with a sense of agency and control, and at framing sustainable behavior as a means for satisfying this basic need by “imposing order on chaos.” In addition, Banfield et al. suggest that environment-related information should be presented to the public in easily understandable formats, such as not to elicit a feeling of threat.

In Chapter 10, Vohs and Fennis provide a social-psychological perspective on how norms and social influence can be utilized in inducing sustainable behavior. Their research suggests that people who are low in self-control can be an easy target for various social influence techniques. Turning what could often be a weakness into a strength, the authors argue that social cues promoting sustainable behaviors will be more readily picked up and acted upon by people with lower self-control. The research shows that when self-regulatory resources are depleted, people become more compliant with salient social norms and persuasion tactics (e.g., reciprocity, celebrity endorsement). The major implication from this perspective for sustainability initiatives is that combining self-control depletion techniques (or targeting people with chronically low self-control) with social influence techniques seems to be an especially effective way to elicit sustainable behavior.

In Chapter 11, Gutsell and Inzlicht present a neuroscientific perspective focusing on the neural mechanisms underlying self-regulation. They show that setting a goal is only one step toward successful goal pursuit. Monitoring one’s goal progress, as well as experiencing strong (negative) emotions after self-control failure (i.e., when the goal is not met) is also crucial. It is argued that from a neuroscientific perspective, motivating sustainable behavior through emphasizing pro-social values, such as empathy, may not be a very effective strategy. That is, since environmental issues are typically quite distant and abstract, it may be difficult to induce strong emotions toward the lot of anonymous people, remote places, or toward nature and the environment in general. Sustainable initiatives may thus be more successful if the environment is personalized and people feel connected to Nature (leading to stronger pro-environmental goals and stronger empathy); if sustainable goals are made more salient (e.g., through clear product labeling); and if violations of pro-environmental goals are made more “painful,” such that stronger negative emotions are experienced after environmental transgressions (i.e., self-control failure). In addition, Gutsell and Inzlicht propose that sustainable behavior could be enhanced by treating it as an instance of the moral domain and stressing the sanctity and purity of nature.

In Chapter 12, Zeelenberg and van Doorn delve further into the importance of emotions in inducing sustainable behavior. Adopting a “feeling-is-for-doing” approach, which stresses the motivational function of emotions, the authors argue that different emotions may divergently influence consumers’ decisions and choices. Empirical evidence is presented regarding the effects of envy, regret, shame, and guilt. The findings show, for instance, that feelings of benign envy might stimulate consumption (e.g., buying a product that someone who is better off also owns). Experiencing or anticipating regret, on the other hand, might drive one to switch to a different product, brand, or service provider, thus producing behavior change. Finally, guilt and shame can induce pro-social behavior (e.g., donating). It is suggested that the motivational power of emotions has practical implications for sustainability initiatives. Inducing feelings of regret and guilt, for example, can strengthen feelings of personal responsibility and thus motivate personal efforts toward sustainable behavior.

In Chapter 13, Paul Sparks addresses sustainable consumption from the perspective of attitude theories. Reviewing the general relationship between attitudes, intentions, and behavior, he questions the very notion of “multiple selves” and attitude–behavior discrepancies. In his view, the degree of incongruency between what people think and intend to do, on the one hand, and what they actually do, on the other, is largely a matter of measurement. That is, more accurate measures of attitudes and intentions—ones that are on the same level of generality as the behavior measures—would produce greater correspondence. Sparks suggests that a meaningful and fruitful framework of the multiple selves problem would be in terms of interpersonal and intergroup relations, rather than in intra-personal terms. Specifically, he argues that sustainable behavior is closely related to the domains of morality (as it concerns the welfare of others) and collective action (as it presents a social dilemma requiring cooperation between people).

In Chapter 14, Postmes, Rabinovich, Morton, and Van Zomeren provide a social identity perspective on the issue of sustainable consumption, suggesting that the “psychological disjuncture” between the individual and environmental problems stems from perceptions of these problems as distant and abstract. Specifically, the common view is that we have inherited the world as it is from the generations before us (hence, we are not responsible for causing the proble...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Section 1: Introduction
• Section 2: Enhancing Sustainable Behavior in Everyday Life
• Section 3: Strengthening the Sustainability Goal
• Section 4: Exploiting Self-Control in Sustainable Behavior
• Section 5: Making Sustainability Personally Relevant
• Section 6: Enhancing Sustainable Behavior in Practice
• Section 7: Concluding Remarks
• Names Index
• Subject Index