Facilitating Positive Spillover Effects: New Insights From a Mixed-Methods Approach Exploring Factors Enabling People to Live More Sustainable Lifestyles

Abstract

Positive spillover occurs when changes in one behavior influence changes in subsequent behaviors. Evidence for such spillover and an understanding of when and how it may occur are still limited. This paper presents findings of a 1-year longitudinal behavior change project led by a commercial retailer in the United Kingdom and Ireland to examine behavior change and potential spillover of pro-environmental behavior, and how this may be associated with changes in environmental identity and perceptions of ease and affordability as well as perceptions of how participation in the project has helped support behavior change. We draw on both quantitative and qualitative data. Study 1 examines quantitative data from the experimental and a matched control group. Study 2 reports qualitative findings from a follow up interview study with participants of the experimental group. As expected, we found significant changes in reported pro-environmental behavior and identity in the experimental group as well as some indications of behavioral spillover. These changes were not significantly associated with changes in environmental identity. The interviews suggested that group dynamics played an important role in facilitating a sense of efficacy and promoting sustained behavior change and spillover. Moreover, the support by a trusted entity was deemed to be of crucial importance.

Above and beyond? How businesses can drive sustainable development by promoting lasting pro‐environmental behaviour change: An examination of the IKEA Live Lagom project

“…Retailer can extend their business strategies by actively supporting them to consume better and less, something recently labelled as ‘extended eco‐efficiency’ and 'extended eco‐sufficiency' respectively (Heikkurinen et al, 2019). The findings also support previous suggestions that effective communication of sustainable business activities can lead to improvements in customers' perception of the respective business (Cuesta‐Valiño, Rodríguez, & Núñez‐Barriopedro, 2019; Mukonza & Swarts, 2019) and strengthen a customer–company identification (Elf et al, 2019; Hur, Moon, & Kim, 2020). Practically, our findings suggest that sustainability approaches applied by businesses should go beyond their traditional boundaries (Heikkurinen et al, 2019; Searcy, 2016).…”

“…Consequently, both continuous and additional behavioural changes might have occurred through an increased motivation to live more sustainable lifestyles at home nurtured through the exposure to other PEBs that other participants adopted. In addition, a sense of belongingness to other project participant (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) and a potential creation of a shared identity between them (Elf, Gatersleben, & Christie, 2019) could have fostered a collective effort (Amel, Manning, Scott, & Koger, 2017).…”

“…A willingness from businesses to engage in experimental learning processes to advance towards more sustainable business models is rare yet urgently required (Elf et al, 2019; McGrath, 2010). Yet besides uncertainty when exploring and piloting new business approaches that include significant financial and non‐financial resources, following the Live Lagom project, IKEA has now made it part of their strategy and initiated a roll‐out of project findings into their sustainability strategy.…”

“…Similar approaches in different areas will need to explore if the type or sector of the company administering behaviour change projects matters. If successful, a greater number of companies embracing more sustainable approaches might want to go above and beyond conventional business practices and operate as what has previously been coined a Lifestyle Change Support System (Elf et al, 2019) allowing for important insights into how businesses across sectors can encourage the widespread adoption of sets of PEBs and lifestyle changes among citizens across time and space.…”

Rebound and Spillovers: Prosumers in Transition

“…The moral licensing concept assumes that past morally positive behavior increases the probability that people will subsequently show potentially less moral behavior (Mazar and Zhong, 2010 ; Mullen and Monin, 2016 ). For behavioral spillovers, social and environmental identity have also been investigated (Elf et al, 2018 ; van der Werff and Steg, 2018 ; Verfuerth et al, 2019 ). Overall empirical research on these types of factors is rare so far, even more so in respect of renewable energy.…”