Abstract
Ideally, pro-environmental consumer behavior leads to a lower impact on the environment. However, due to negative behavioral spillovers environmentally friendly behavior could lead to an overall higher environmental impact if subsequent environmentally unfriendly behavior occurs. In this exploratory interview study we focused on two pathways leading to negative spillover: a psychological path (perceived effort, moral licensing) and an economic path (rebound effects). We wanted to gain insight into people’s motivations to behave environmentally unfriendly and to explore people’s level of awareness of both pathways. Our results indicate that pro-environmental behaviors that are associated with higher effort are performed less frequently, and that when people do not perform these behaviors they associate them with higher effort levels. When people perceive behaviors as more effortful they increasingly seem to use arguments to motivate and rationalize why performing the behavior is difficult or impossible. Moreover, we found that although some people can imagine that moral licensing and rebound effects could occur and can provide examples from their own lives, most people assess these concepts as not rational. People seem unaware of the relation between a first pro-environmental behavior (PEB) and a subsequent behavior, and therefore inconsistencies in behavior go unnoticed. As people are good at rationalizing why they do not perform specific PEBs, they in general feel satisfied with their own pro-environmental actions. In order to discourage negative spillovers, we describe a number of approaches and research ideas aimed at taking away the grounds for rationalization.
Highlights
Pro-environmental behavior (PEB) takes many forms, such as insulating one’s home, eating less meat, recycling empty glass bottles or using a bicycle
As spillovers can occur when the first PEB is not caused by a targeted effort and behaviors can spill over to unrelated areas, we accept a broader definition as a starting point: acting in a pro-environmental way changes a person’s likelihood or extent of performing other PEBs (Lanzini and Thøgersen, 2014)
We investigated the effort respondents associated with each PEB and discriminated between whether respondents performed the PEB or not
Summary
Pro-environmental behavior (PEB) takes many forms, such as insulating one’s home, eating less meat, recycling empty glass bottles or using a bicycle. Van der Werff and Steg (2018), for example, describe that when people realize they engaged in PEB, their environmental self-identity is likely to be strengthened, increasing the likelihood of performing other PEBs. Other studies, show that most people do desire to behave consistently (Thøgersen, 2004). Van der Werff and Steg (2018), for example, describe that when people realize they engaged in PEB, their environmental self-identity is likely to be strengthened, increasing the likelihood of performing other PEBs In this case the first behavior leads to the second behavior. If people behave inconsistently with regard to their PEBs, this may be caused either by negative spillover or because behaviors are not perceived as being related In the latter case people may not experience any inconsistency when performing one behavior and not the other
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