MOTIVE · Motivating Consumers for Sustainable Consumption: The Causal Effects of Multiple Motives
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-01-01 → 2022-03-01
- EU contribution
- €219,312
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Motivating Consumers for Sustainable Consumption: The Causal Effects of Multiple Motives
The low share of sustainable consumption signals an important need to investigate consumers’ motivations for sustainable consumption. A better understanding of consumers’ motivational drivers can be helpful in tackling environmental problems. Objectives 1: to examine the role of gain, normative and hedonic motivations as drivers of sustainable consumption and investigate the relative importance of each motive in different consumption contexts. Objective 2: to examine the situational factors including infrastructure (e.g. charging station for electric cars), social norms, non-monetary incentives (e.g. policy which allows use of bus lanes for electric cars) and sociodemographic variables (e.g. gender) which moderate the effects of gain, normative and hedonic motivations on sustainable consumption. Conclusions of actions: -Feelings of pride and guilt-relief associated with the outcome of an environmental policy positively influence active and non-active pro-environmental behavior through perceptions of policy effectiveness. Thus, the more people perceive the policy to be effective, the more they are willing to support the policy and the more they are willing to perform the associated direct pro-environmental behavior. -Climate change belief fully mediates the relationship between political ideology and buying energy efficient appliances. Supporters of right-orientation who are interested in politics score low on climate change beliefs and concerns. -Communicating losses (environmental losses such as bad air quality) which are avoided with a sustainable service (transport service) together with information on the collective efforts of the company's way of handling its environmental promises would increase sustainable behavior and choice of sustainable transport service in consumers. This is an important finding as collective efforts are necessary for green transition. Communicating about the collective efforts of companies to achieve green transition increases consumers' sustainable behaviors when the losses avoided by the sustainable choices are communicated to consumers.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The low share of sustainable consumption signals an important need to investigate consumers’ motivations for sustainable consumption. A better understanding of consumers’ motivational drivers can be helpful in increasing the sustainable consumption and, thus tackling environmental problems. Consumers’ motivations for sustainable consumption have been investigated from different theoretical perspectives. A comprehensive theoretical framework explaining why people [do not] buy sustainable products is a gap in the literature. This research project contributes to the Goal Framing Theory which has so far been discussed on the conceptual level mainly. This theory is different from the most well-known theories of consumer pro-environmental behavior (such as normative theories) in the sense that it integrates three categories of individual motivations, namely gain (weighing costs and benefits), normative (personal moral norms) and hedonic (positive emotions) motivations. This research project investigates the effects and relationships of gain, normative and hedonic motivations on sustainable consumption. As of context, four sustainable products namely electric cars, solar panels, car sharing and smart thermometers are selected. Moreover, this research examines the moderating effect of socio-demographic variables including gender, and situational variable including social norms, policy and infrastructure on these effects. Utilizing experimental design, this research will provide novel insights on how to communicate and promote sustainable consumption.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- SYDDANSK UNIVERSITET · Odense MCoordinatorDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union