Environmental campaigns often promote energy conservation by appealing to economic (for example, lower electricity bills) rather than biospheric concerns (for example, reduced carbon emissions), assuming that people are primarily motivated by economic self-interest. However, people also care about maintaining a favourable view of themselves (they want to maintain a 'positive self-concept'), and may prefer to see themselves as 'green' rather than 'greedy'. Consequently, people may find economic appeals less attractive than biospheric appeals. Across two studies, participants indicated feeling better about biospheric ('Want to protect the environment? Check your car's tire pressure') than economic ('Want to save money? Check your car's tire pressure') tyre-check appeals. In a field experiment, we found that an economic tyre-check appeal ('Do you care about your finances? Get a free tire check') elicited significantly less compliance than parallel biospheric and neutral appeals. Together, these studies discredit the conventional wisdom that appealing to economic self-interest is the best way to secure behaviour change. At least in some cases, our studies suggest, this strategy is not effective.

The contributions and merits of an applied behavior analysis approach to encouraging proenvironment behavior are reviewed, along with a discussion of ways behavioral science can play a greater role in protecting the environment. After presenting the most serious threats to the earth's environment, the targets, settings and techniques of the behavioral intervention literature are reviewed. It is argued that behavior analysis can play a greater role in solving environmental problems through (a) reexamination and expansion of intervention targets, (b) increased focus on long-term maintenance of pro-environment behavior, and (c) more effective dissemination of intervention strategies and research findings.

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