Instilling a sense of pride in eco-friendly decisions motivates individuals to choose environmentally friendly products.
What unsustainable behaviour needs to change:
Policymakers, advocacy organisations, and many other groups often attempt to encourage sustainable behaviour by invoking negative emotions such as guilt. Their goal is to promote pro-environmental actions by highlighting the consequences of unsustainable choices and the responsibility for inaction regarding climate change.
However, these appeals often have limited impact.
The Green Nudge:
In an experiment, Schneider et al. explored the role of anticipated positive and negative emotional states – pride and guilt – in relation to pro-environmental behaviour.
They induced these emotions in three different ways:
By displaying a sentence at the top of the screen while participants answered a survey;
By asking participants to write a brief essay reflecting on the feelings associated with a real future decision;
By imagining the emotions (pride vs. guilt) they would experience if they chose a green vs. non-green option, such as buying a car, dishwasher, cleaning product, or backpack.
After eliciting feelings of pride or guilt, participants were asked to choose between sustainable and non-environmentally friendly options.
The result: The researchers found that all forms of induced pride significantly increased pro-environmental behaviour compared to guilt. Participants were more likely to choose green options, select more eco-friendly features for their homes, express intentions to buy a green product in the next month, and engage in various green actions – all driven by positive emotions rather than negative ones.
Interestingly, both pride and guilt were equally influential only when it came to financial donations to an environmental advocacy organisation.
Are you aware of any other nudges that help to drive the adoption of sustainable products? Feel free to get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
From Bianca Richter, a German studies scholar and psychology student specialising in environmental psychology. As part of her internship at Green Nudges Consulting, she explores opportunities where behavioural change can benefit the environment.
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