Cause I’ll Feel Good! The Influence of Anticipated Emotions on Consumer Pro-environmental Behavior

Abstract

Although consumers express environmental attitudes, the pro-environmental behaviors are not dominant. Despite the benefi ts of sustainable technologies in reducing the environmental impacts of consumption, consumer adoption of these technologies is very slow to take off. We propose an integrated approach for investigating the effect of consumer anticipated emotions and moral norms on consumer adoption of a sustainable technology (electric vehicles). 576 Swedish car drivers participated in an online survey during winter of 2013. Our fi ndings suggest that anticipated emotions directly infl uence consumer adoption intentions and the effect of moral norms on behavioral intentions is mediated by the anticipated emotions. The fi ndings have implications for policymakers and car producers in promoting the zero emission transportation. We suggest communicating the positive emotions related to driving an electric vehicle and use of emotions in cars' energy labelling.

Do normative triggers and motivations influence the intention to purchase organic food? An application of the goal-framing theory

“…Miao and Wei (2013) argued that hedonic motives derive sustainable behavior when pro-environmental actions require some sacrifice of comfort and joy during travel. Rezvani and Jansson (2016) used positive and negative emotions to predict sustainable consumption. The empirical results noted that positive emotions influence more on the sustainable intentions than negative emotions.…”

“…They found it relevant in both, direct and indirect contexts. Rezvani and Jansson (2016) have used positive and negative emotions as a mediator between personal norms and intentions to adopt electric vehicles. They concluded that having strong normative motivations for reducing environmental impacts from driving a car help increase the possibility of positive emotions like pride, guilt and excitement.…”