Should we talk (more) about climate change when promoting energy conservation? An intervention in Swiss households

Abstract

To encourage energy conservation, some interventions refer to abstract, large-scale, and complex phenomena (e.g., climate change), while others rely on concrete actions (e.g., changing light bulbs) and consequences (e.g., saving money). Some also combine both. Mostly conducted in non-applied settings, existing studies that compare the impact of abstract vs. concrete pro-environmental interventions have yielded mixed results. Moreover, they have not documented the potential advantage, in the long term, of adding abstract information to an existing concrete intervention. With this goal in mind, we joined an intervention in which households of two neighbourhoods (N = 177) participated in an energy conservation programme encouraging and facilitating concrete energy-conserving behaviours. We randomly assigned about half of the households to a concrete-only condition (the basic intervention) and half to a condition in which we also provided abstract environmental information. Results showed that an abstract message added to a concrete intervention successfully increased the amount of attention households reported paying to energy consumption six months after the intervention, compared to the concrete-only intervention. An abstract message also had an indirect impact on energy saving behaviours six months later, through increased biospheric (environmental) values. Taken together, these results suggest that low-level construal goals, such as everyday energy saving behaviours, should be accompanied by high-level construal goals, such as limiting climate change, to increase individuals’ willingness to act for the environment.