What Influences People’s Tradeoff Decisions Between CO2 Emissions and Travel Time? An Experiment With Anchors and Normative Messages

Abstract

One of the today’s greatest challenges is to adjust our behavior so that we can avoid a major climate disaster. To do so, we must make sacrifices for the sake of the environment. The study reported here investigates how anchors (extrinsic motivational-free information) and normative messages (extrinsic motivational information) influence people’s tradeoffs between travel time and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the context of car travel and whether any interactions with environmental concern (an intrinsic motivational factor) can be observed. In this study, people received either a CO2, health or no normative message together with either a high anchor, a low anchor, or no anchor. People that received both a high anchor and a CO2 emission normative message were willing to travel for a longer time than those that only received a high anchor. If a low anchor was presented, no differences in willingness to travel for a longer time were found between the three different conditions of normative message groups, i.e., CO2 normative message, health normative message, or no normative message. People with higher concern for the environment were found to be willing to travel for a longer time than those with lower concern for the environment. Further, this effect was strongest when a high anchor was presented. These results suggest that anchors and normative messages are among the many factors that can influence people’s tradeoffs between CO2 emission and travel time, and that various factors may have to be combined to increase their influence over pro-environmental behavior and decisions.

Thermostat Anchors: Do Temperature Scale Characteristics Affect the Selection of Temperature Setpoints for Residential Homes?

“…According to the authors, these anchoring effects joined the positive effects of passengers' perceptions of the effectiveness of a proposed carbon travel tax and their perceived responsibility to prevent climate change to influence high willingness to pay for the presented bid. As a second example, Andersson et al [25] demonstrated effects of anchors and normative messages on people's willingness to travel for longer periods of time to reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. The authors found that participants who were assigned to a condition with a high anchor (8 h and 30 min of travel) and a normative message on CO 2 emissions (a prompt stating a target for reducing CO 2 emissions) were willing to travel for longer compared to participants in conditions of low anchors (5 h and 30 min of travel) and no normative messages.…”