Testing Novel Norm Interventions for Promoting Pro-environmental Consumption
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Date
2024-01-09
Authors
Lieber, Sara
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The purpose of the current project was to investigate how a social psychology approach could be used to develop an effective climate-change mitigation tool. A commonly used technique in the social psychology literature for promoting the adoption of pro-environmental behaviors is the norm intervention. In the current project, three methodological changes to the norm-intervention approach were implemented and tested, including 1) broadening the range of types of norm-intervention conditions, 2) including both a pro-environmental and a self-enhancing framing, and 3) communicating how pre-existing motivations to engage in environmentally harmful behaviors can be achieved by adopting a new pro-environmental behavior. Overall, the pro-environmental framing that has been typically used in prior research was the most effective at improving people’s pro-environmental behaviors. Norm conditions did not appear to persuade people to change their pro-environmental consumer intentions and behaviors by much. Additionally, it was actually people’s values, a dispositional factor, which had the strongest predictive power compared to the study’s attempt to modify people’s pro-environmental outcomes by varying the situational context. Consistent with previous research, biospheric values positively predicted, and egoistic values negatively predicted, pro-environmental consumer intentions and behaviors consistently across most framing and norm conditions.
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Keywords
climate, consumption, demand-sided strategy, norm interventions, pro-environmental behavior, social psychology interventions