How Pride Triggered by Pro-environmental Technology Adoption Spills Over into Conservation Behaviours: A Social Business Application

Danae Manika,Paolo Antonetti,Savvas Papagiannidis,Xiaojing Guo

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121005

Abstract

Based on a new social business initiative, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions in China with the development of a new solar photovoltaic/thermal system that promises higher overall energy efficiency, lower costs, and better monitoring and control settings than existing systems, this study examines how pride triggered by environmentally-friendly technology adoption spills over into conservation behaviours. The study used an online survey of 163 Chinese customers and a pride-inducing methodology to investigate how pride in purchasing pro-environmental technology could lead to positive spillovers. A Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the results. Feelings of pride elicited by the intentions to purchase the novel technology positively affect subsequent behaviours of reducing energy consumption by other means (same domain), as well as recycling and reusing materials (different domain). Pride appeals can be leveraged by social businesses as by definition they focus on the social good and, according to our findings, pride-inducing messages enhance the impacts of the pro-environmental technology adoption. Such spillovers can be beneficial to society, thus allowing social businesses to satisfy social and financial goals at the same time.

Highlights

The growing trend of social businesses, whose ultimate goal is value for society rather than profit maximisation (Gold et al, 2020), has brought about numerous opportunities and challenges
We examine the psychological mechanism of pride, trig gered by pro-environmental technology adoption, and how this specific emotion spills over to conservation be haviours within the same domain and other domains
We first review the literature on social businesses and spillovers, followed by the pro-environmental behaviour and spillovers literature, while outlining the novel technology examined in this paper, the pro-environmental technology adoption and conservation behaviour literature, and lastly we review literature on the psychological mechanism of pride, in order to ground our hypoth esised model

Summary

Introduction

The growing trend of social businesses, whose ultimate goal is value for society rather than profit maximisation (Gold et al, 2020), has brought about numerous opportunities and challenges. The difference is that in the case of social busi nesses, the spillover is intentional, from economic activity to social good, to allow the business to achieve its primary aim i.e., contribute to value for society. Without taking into account the concept of spillovers, the social benefits delivered by a business’s action could be under estimated (Torres, 2015). This is not something that social businesses should take lightly as “failure to account for them [spillovers] increases the cost of meeting a particular ... The role of spillovers has been overlooked in past social business research

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