Once Good, Always Good? Testing Nudge’s Spillovers on Pro Environmental Behavior

Sophie Clot,Sarah Jewell,Marina Della Giusta

doi:10.1177/00139165211060524

Abstract

It is a common assumption to believe that encouraging pro environmental behavior (PEB) in one domain would lead to increased PEB in other domains (best-case scenario) or just be restricted to the initial targeted domain (worst-case scenario). Evidence from a rapidly growing literature on moral licensing suggests that interventions targeting behavioral change could lead to an even worse scenario, with individuals starting to underperform in one domain, as a compensation for their good performance in other domains. We propose to study the dynamic of PEBs when individuals are exposed to a specific nudge (priming) via an original experiment designed to capture actual behavior. We found that priming could increase PEB, but does not thwart moral licensing. Primed individuals end up doing worse than non-primed individual under a moral licensing condition. A more comprehensive view of the mechanisms underlying behavioral change is essential to support sustainable policies.

Highlights

The implicit expectation of behavior change initiatives is that once an individual has become more conscious in one domain, this will spread to a whole range of other choices
It is a common assumption to believe that encouraging pro environmental behavior (PEB) in one domain would lead to increased PEB in other domains or just be restricted to the initial targeted domain
Evidence from a rapidly growing literature on moral licensing suggests that interventions targeting behavioral change could lead to an even worse scenario, with individuals starting to underperform in one domain, as a compensation for their good performance in other domains

Summary

Introduction

The implicit expectation of behavior change initiatives is that once an individual has become more conscious in one domain, this will spread to a whole range of other choices This rests on two assumptions: (1) that having more information about issues and caring about them encourages more action, and (2) aside from practical resource constraints (essentially time and various forms of capital, including human capital) there is no upper limit to the amount of “good” actions that individuals are willing to undertake. Relying on 202 individual interviews about sustainable lifestyle, Barr et al (2011) highlighted this contradiction within individual lifestyle Their findings reveal that people having the greener habits at home were those flying the most. People further argue that they deserved such flying as a reward for their green efforts This is a concrete example of paradox linked to moral licensing that may seriously affect the efficiency of pro-environmental initiatives

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