Is an Appeal Enough? The Limited Impact of Financial, Environmental, and Communal Appeals in Promoting Involvement in Community Environmental Initiatives

Daniel Sloot,Linda Steg,Lise Jans

doi:10.3390/su13031085

Daniel Sloot, Linda Steg + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031085

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Abstract

Community environmental initiatives are set up by community members to promote pro-environmental behaviours in their community. Community members involved in these initiatives are likely to behave more pro-environmentally. Yet, the question remains how to get community members involved. Previous findings suggest stronger environmental and communal, but not financial, motives promote people’s involvement in community environmental initiatives. The present paper examines whether appeals to such environmental or communal motives can promote involvement more than appeals to financial motives or no appeals. Three experimental studies revealed that environmental and communal appeals did not promote initiative involvement more than financial appeals or no appeals. Moreover, a combined environmental and communal appeal was not more effective than single appeals. Furthermore, in a field study examining 167 existing community energy initiatives, we found no relationship between the emphasis in flyers on financial, environmental, and communal benefits of initiative involvement and the proportion of community members involved in these initiatives. These findings suggest appeals may not be enough to promote initiative involvement. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Highlights

We aim to address this gap in the literature, and test whether environmental and communal appeals are more effective in promoting initiative involvement than financial appeals or no appeals
Post-hoc tests showed that the quality of the financial appeal was perceived as lower than that of the environmental appeal (p < 0.001) and the communal appeal (p = 0.024), while the perceived quality of the environmental and communal appeals did not differ (p = 0.206)
Participants in the environmental appeal condition indicated that the flyer emphasised environmental benefits more than communal benefits (p < 0.001), whereas participants in the communal appeal condition indicated more emphasis on communal benefits than environmental benefits (p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Limiting the effects of climate change requires a rapid transition towards more proenvironmental behaviour [1]. Different strategies have been implemented to promote proenvironmental behaviour, including community environmental initiatives, referred to as grassroot initiatives and bottom-up initiatives (e.g., [2,3,4]). We define community environmental initiatives as initiatives started and run by some community members to promote more pro-environmental behaviour within their community (e.g., [2,3,5,6])

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