A Social Dilemma Analysis of Commuting Preferences: The Roles of Social Value Orientation and Trust¹

Abstract

The current research advances a social dilemma analysis of commuting, examining the roles of preexisting personality differences in social value orientation (i.e., prosocial vs. proself orientation) and trust (i.e., a general belief in the honesty and cooperative intentions of others) in determining preferences for collectively desirable commuting options: preferences for commuting by public transportation (Study 1) and carpooling (Study 2). Consistent with predictions, both studies revealed that, relative to preferences of prosocials, preferences of proselfs were more strongly associated with beliefs about the relative efficiency of cars (i.e., an outcome affecting personal well-being). Also, greater preferences for collectively desirable actions were observed among prosocials with high trust-relative to prosocials with low trust and proselfs with high or low trust-providing support for the claim that 2 conditions (i.e., prosocial goals and trust in others) must be met to obtain collectively desirable commuting preferences.

Who Cares about the Environmental Impact of Cars?

“…Third, relative to proselfs, prosocials report less concern with travel flexibility and more concern with environmental impact . Fourth, proselfs are more sensitive to the relative efficiency of cars versus public transportation, suggesting that they are more concerned with how commuting alternatives affect their own individual outcomes (Van Lange et al, 1998).…”

“…Based on this classic conceptualization of social dilemmas, these studies have devoted much attention to individual differences in social value orientation, assuming and often demonstrating that prosocials (or in some cases, prosocials with high trust) are more inclined to commute by public transportation (e.g., Van Lange et al, 1998;Van Vugt et al, 1995;. A number of these studies have also established that preference for commuting by public transportation is higher among people who believe that commuting by car harms the environment (Van Lange et al, 1998;. One consistent and surprising finding in these studies has been that prosocials were not more sensitive than proselfs to the perceived environmental impact of cars.…”

Social Value Orientation as a Moral Intuition: Decision-Making in the Dictator Game

“…Many daily life situations are analogous to this pay-off structure. SVO has shown to predict choices between traveling by public transport and taking one's own car (Van Lange et al, 1998;van Vugt et al, 1996), willingness to pursue the goals of an organization one belongs to at a personal cost (Nauta et al, 2002), willingness to sacrifice in close relationships (Van Lange et al, 1997a), helping behavior (McClintock & Allison, 1989), and intentions to behave pro-environmentally (Gärling et al, 2003;Joireman et al, 2001). In some situations, however, behavior of prosocials and pro-selfs coincides.…”

“…We would argue it does, for several reasons. First, previous research has provided empirical proof, as SVO has been used to predict choices between traveling by public transport and taking one's own car (Van Lange et al, 1998;van Vugt et al, 1996), willingness to Decision-Making in the Dictator Game 27 pursue the goals of an organization one belongs to at a personal cost (Nauta et al, 2002), willingness to sacrifice in close relationships (Van Lange et al, 1997a), helping behavior (McClintock & Allison, 1989), and intentions to behave proenvironmentally (Gärling et al, 2003;Joireman et al, 2001). Second, it has been argued that in most situations in our daily lives a large number of stimuli compete for our limited cognitive resources, and behavior is therefore often executed rather automatically (Bargh & Thein, 1985;Bargh et al, 1994;Gilbert & Osborne, 1989).…”

Understanding consumer decisions using behavioral economics

“…A green claim, therefore, is not a directly perceivable reward and appeals to consumers 284 only through their individual belief in environmental benefits (Bolderdijk, 2011 to the consumer, but in terms of determinance in guiding behaviour primary benefits typically take 291 priority. Especially when primary and secondary benefits are to some extent at odds, social 292 dilemma theory indeed indicates that it is more likely that primary benefits will be persued to direct 293 need satisfaction than that people sacrifice their immediate self-interest for long-term collective 294 benefit (Balliet et al, 2011;Van Lange et al, 1998). 295…”