The Double-Edged Sword of Ethical Nudges: Does Inducing Hypocrisy Help or Hinder the Adoption of Pro-environmental Behaviors?

Abstract

To promote ethical and pro-environmental behavior, hypocrisy sometimes is made salient to individuals: i.e., they are made aware that their past behavior does not conform to expressed norms. The fact that this strategy may backfire and may even reduce the likelihood of individuals performing the desired action has been largely overlooked. This paper develops a theory of how hypocrisy stimulates two opposing heuristic processes: one that favors the former, positive outcome (the eco-citizenship effect) and one that renders hypocrisy non-effective (resistance-to-habit-change effect). We test the model and reveal important boundary conditions using the finding of a comprehensive field experiment (1377 consumers). Situational (public vs. private advocacy) and individual factors (low vs. high construal levels) determine which of the competing mechanisms is activated. The paper contributes a novel understanding to managers and scholars of how hypocrisy operates and illuminates the contingencies of when this strategy is beneficial.

Policy Acceptance of Low-Consumption Governance Approaches: The Effect of Social Norms and Hypocrisy

“…This could be explained by research that has shown how increased salience of hypocrisy can also evoke a 'rebound' effect, where individuals harden their stance and refuse to change their habits. One reason for this might be that people find it easier to renege on their recent advocacy statement and change their beliefs to be in accordance with the transgression of the target behaviour, and find this a suitable way to relieve themselves from any negative affect arising from the arousal of dissonance [30,40,67,68]. We must understand the conditions of this rebound effect as it is important to understand when activating the salience of hypocrisy is useful or not [69].…”

“…Previous research has utilized a hypocrisy paradigm in order to induce hypocrisy in participants, resulting in increased uptake of pro-environmental, ethical, and pro-social behaviours [30][31][32][33][34][35]. The hypocrisy paradigm was pioneered by Aronson, Fried and Stone [36] who designed an experiment that has since reliably induced hypocrisy and dissonance.…”

“…Participants were told that their signature would be publicly displayed. While in actual fact their signatures were never publicly displayed, it was important the participants believed that the advocacy pledge would be public as this is the most effective at eliciting behaviour change [30]. In the hypocrisy condition, participants were also asked to sign the pledge (as in the advocacy condition) but were then also asked to rate the frequency of any behavioural transgressions that contradict their pledge to reduce consumption.…”

“…Participants were told that their signature would be publicly displayed. While in actual fact their signatures were never publicly displayed, it was important the participants believed that the advocacy pledge would be public as this is the most effective at eliciting behaviour change [30].…”

“…From the environmental psychology literature, we know that social norms and hypocrisy have been found to encourage the uptake of some pro-environmental behaviours (PEB) such as recycling, plastic bag use, water conservation, etc. (see [28,29] for meta-reviews on social norms; [30] for hypocrisy). However, these approaches have not been applied to material consumption choices or to policy preferences in relation to reduced consumption; hence, the current research represents a much-needed advance towards redirecting environmental psychology towards high-impact pro-environmental behaviours [31].…”