The role of lay beliefs about willpower and daily demands in day-to-day pro-environmental behavior

Abstract

Many people report pro-environmental attitudes but fail to integrate pro-environmental behavior into their daily lives. One reason might be that other high demands in daily life (e.g., from work) make people vulnerable to the temptation to choose easier, but environmentally unfriendly options. Research from other domains indicates that believing that one's willpower is nonlimited facilitates adhering to one's intentions, especially in the context of high demands. Our study aimed to investigate the effect of these lay beliefs about willpower and daily demands in the environmental context. The hypotheses were (1) that a nonlimited willpower belief would be related to more engagement in day-to-day pro-environmental behavior and (2) that this effect would be stronger on days with high demands. Participants (N = 387) of an online daily dairy study reported their lay beliefs about willpower and their daily demands and pro-environmental behavior over three days. Results confirmed that a nonlimited willpower belief was related to more pro-environmental behavior, mainly because it facilitated sustained pro-environmental behavior on more demanding days. Additionally, we found that people who faced more demands across the entire study period engaged in less pro-environmental behavior irrespective of their willpower belief. These results indicate the relevance of demands and willpower beliefs in pro-environmental behavior. Future studies should examine their causal relationship and might inform future interventions to promote pro-environmental behavior (e.g., suggesting targeting people's demands and their willpower beliefs).