Can competing demands affect pro-environmental behaviour: a study of the impact of exposure to partly related sequential experiments

Abstract

The study of human behaviour is central to the development of appropriate policies for sustainability. We argue that mathematical models of human choice behaviour may produce biased results if they fail to account for the possibility of spillover effects, in particular the possibility that individual behaviour may change as a result of interventions along with competing demands (multiple demands), such as in the sequential exposure to partly related choice contexts. Using a sample of 751 individuals and a carefully constructed experiment, we develop mathematical models that jointly explain the choice between different pro-environmental actions and the willingness to donate money for environmental causes, and at the same time, allow us to test the indirect effect of exposure to multiple demands. We find that the strength of preferences for behavioural changes leading to greater CO2 reductions is (causally) shaped by participants previously considering other similar behavioural changes. The kind of spillover effects we find are relatively complex and often subtle, and thus warrant further replication studies. Care was taken to account for variation of tastes, formatting, order and learning effects, thus reducing the risk of the spillover-related results being influenced by differences across individuals in environmental preferences. Our study demonstrates the existence of a specific type of spillover effects, namely how prior exposure to related choice contexts may affect behaviour in subsequent settings and showcased the effectiveness of discrete choice models to test for it. Given our results, we believe that spillover effects need to be taken into account in the broader choice modelling literature, and at the same time we showcase a useful experimental framework for environmental psychologists and economists.