Advertising energy saving programs: The potential environmental cost of emphasizing monetary savings.

Abstract

Many consumers have monetary and environmental motivations for saving energy. Indeed, saving energy produces both monetary benefits, by reducing energy bills, and environmental benefits, by reducing carbon footprints. We examined how consumers' willingness and reasons to enroll in energy-savings programs are affected by whether advertisements emphasize monetary benefits, environmental benefits, or both. From a normative perspective, having two noteworthy kinds of benefit should not decrease a program's attractiveness. In contrast, psychological research suggests that adding external incentives to an intrinsically motivating task may backfire. To date, however, it remains unclear whether this is the case when both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are inherent to the task, as with energy savings, and whether removing explicit mention of extrinsic motivation will reduce its importance. We found that emphasizing a program's monetary benefits reduced participants' willingness to enroll. In addition, participants' explanations about enrollment revealed less attention to environmental concerns when programs emphasized monetary savings, even when environmental savings were also emphasized. We found equal attention to monetary motivations in all conditions, revealing an asymmetric attention to monetary and environmental motives. These results also provide practical guidance regarding the positioning of energy-saving programs: emphasize intrinsic benefits; the extrinsic ones may speak for themselves.

Saving water to save the environment: contrasting the effectiveness of environmental and monetary appeals in a residential water saving intervention

“…Bolderdijk and colleagues (2013) found that, to promote a tire check among car drivers (to reduce gasoline usage), environmental appeals were more effective as compared to monetary appeals. Schwartz, Bruine de Bruin, Fischhoff, and Lave (2015) found similar results when gauging the willingness to enrol in an energy saving program. In another study, Asensio and Delmas (2015) found that the combination of environmental and health-related information outperformed financial information in reducing electricity energy consumption over a period of eight months.…”

Saving electricity – For the money or the environment? Risks of limiting pro-environmental spillover when using monetary framing

“…Monetary gains, however may be effective only when perceived as worth the effort (Dogan et al, 2014). If the monetary gains involved are rather small, monetary framing has negative effects on the target behaviour (Asensio & Delmas, 2015;Bolderdijk et al, 2013;Schwartz et al, 2015). Due to inconclusive evidence so far, we assume:…”

“…Evidently, the effects of environmental or monetary framing depend strongly on the perceived behavioural gains. Environmental gains are perceived worthwhile, independent of their size (Bolderdijk et al, 2013;Dogan et al, 2014;Schwartz et al, 2015). Monetary gains, however may be effective only when perceived as worth the effort (Dogan et al, 2014).…”

“…It was shown that monetary framing can limit positive spillover effects (Evans et al, 2013). Furthermore, appeals to monetary aspects may not even be effective in changing the targeted pro-environmental behaviour (Asensio & Delmas, 2015;Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman, & Postmes, 2013;Schwartz, Bruine de Bruin, Fischhoff, & Lave, 2015).…”

Informing Public Perceptions About Climate Change: A ‘Mental Models’ Approach

“…Frugal consumers may be motivated by financial incentives, at least for as long as they are being provided (Fischer 2008). However, pro-environmental consumers may be turned off by financial incentives, because it undermines the "warm glow" of pro-environmental motivations (Schwartz et al 2015;Taufik et al 2014). Social rewards may therefore be more effective than financial rewards (Agrawal et al 2014;Handgraaf et al 2013).…”