Discounting the future: The effect of collective motivation on investment decisions and acceptance of policies for renewable energy

Abstract

Climate protection is a collective project. However, most previous research on people’s pro-climate behavior ignores the collective dimension, looking at personal private-sphere behavior and considering personal cost-benefit predictors only. The present paper transcends this individualistic perspective by addressing behaviors that target collective transformation (i.e., financial investments in renewable energy projects and the acceptance of renewable energy policies) and predictors of collective cognition and motivation (i.e., social identity). Combining insights and methods from economics and psychology, the current research investigates if collective pro-environmental motivation (e.g., pro-environmental ingroup norms, collective climate efficacy beliefs) can add to the explanation of investment decisions and the acceptance of policies for renewable energies, also beyond personal psychological and economic factors. Results from a multi-country survey (31 European countries, N = 18,037), including a discrete choice experiment, showed that collective pro-environmental motivation was positively correlated with the acceptance of green energy policies and negatively correlated with discounting of future benefits (money discount rate) in investment decisions for renewable energies. Importantly, collective pro-environmental motivation remained a significant predictor of policy acceptance and the discount rate after controlling for personal pro-environmental motivation. Furthermore, the associations between collective pro-environmental motivation and our outcome measures were stronger for respondents who highly identified with their group compared to low identifiers. Our (correlational) results are one of the first to show that collective psychological factors are a unique predictor of green investment behavior and acceptance of green policies. From an applied perspective, our findings suggest that interventions should target agentic social identities with norms supporting pro-environmental behavior to increase acceptance of and participation in the transformation towards carbon neutrality, particularly for persons with low personal pro-environmental motivation.

A belowground perspective on the nexus between biodiversity change, climate change, and human well‐being

“…However, increasing problem awareness and knowledge is only a first step, given the gaps between individual attitudes and behavior (Bamberg & Möser, 2007) as well as individuals' social interdependencies when aiming at protecting nature (Fritsche et al, 2018). As a second step, it is thus crucial to support individual action and the acceptance of soil protection policies to foster and encourage people's sense of collective environmental agency (e.g., pro-environmental social norms and collective efficacy; Fritsche & Masson, 2021) in their self-relevant social groups, such as local and large-scale communities or professional groups (e.g., farmers; Hoppe et al, 2023;Marder et al, 2023).…”

Effective cooperation leading to support of reforestation via a ‘climate public goods game’ in the Chinese collectivistic society

“…When economists have been studying the rational dynamics converted into numbers of the profitability of caring about the environment, psychologists have looked at the mental obstacles to overcome for achieving long-term environmental goals (de Groot and Thøgersen, 2018;Milfont and Gouveia, 2006;Wade-Benzoni and Tost, 2009); obstacles which need to be superseded and turned into proactive engagement (Milfont, Wilson and Diniz, 2012) in a list of 'motivational interventions' (Geller, 2002) that drive problem-solving in most of our daily tasks. Hence, in this study, we do not aim at examining only if collectivistic values are beneficial to foster cooperative group behaviour, but also if they are helpful in the presence of an uncertain future (Marder et al, 2023).…”

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“…For environmental psychologists this means a shift in interest: away from private personal environmental behaviors to those kinds of action that affect, or are part of, the "Great Transformation" (Bamberg et al, 2015;Barth et al, 2021). Instead of focusing all efforts on understanding people's everyday decisions whether to take the bus or not, novel research programs currently emerge in environmental psychology that inquire the conditions of people's collectively relevant actions, such as accepting green policies (Bergquist et al, 2022), investing money in green businesses (Marder et al, 2023), or participating in, or creating, political movements (Bamberg et al, 2015). The current GEP special issue, "Responding to the Socio-Ecological Crisis: Collective Action and Activism" presents an up-to date snapshot of this revolution in the field and gives a flavor of where the field is moving to so quickly.…”