Individual differences in values determine the relative persuasiveness of biospheric, economic and combined appeals

Abstract

Many environmental campaigns highlight both the environmental and financial benefits of behaviour change, in the hope of motivating a broad audience. But are such mixed appeals more persuasive than separate appeals? We argue that messages tailored to match recipient's prioritised values are more persuasive than combined appeals. We conducted a questionnaire study to assess the persuasiveness of economic, environmental, and mixed appeals (N ¼ 210). As expected, individual differences in values moderated the persuasive power of the different appeals. Importantly, we found that appeals that matched the recipients' values were more persuasive than the combined appeal. Interestingly, personal norms also acted as a moderator. These findings suggest that environmental campaigns aimed to induce behavioural change can benefit from tailoring persuasive messages to idiosyncratic characteristics of their target group, rather than employing a one-size-fits-all message.

Can green behaviors really be increased for all employees? Trade‐offs for “deep greens” in a goal‐oriented green human resource management intervention

“…Studies have also demonstrated that extrinsic motivation negatively affects PEB. For example, extrinsic rewards reduced the motivation to engage in energy-saving programs (Schwartz, Bruine de Bruin, Fischhoff, & Lave, 2015) and using financial gains as a motivator is detrimental to holding attention to those with pro-environmental values (van den Broek, Bolderdijk, & Steg, 2017).…”

“…The shortened version of the revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000;Whitmarsh & O'Neill, 2010) was used as a proxy for autonomous environmental motivation (e.g., van den Broek et al, 2017). Environmental beliefs have been demonstrated to correlate significantly with environmental motivation, with stronger positive correlations for more selfdetermined motives (most strongly with intrinsic) and weaker and negative correlations with less self-determined motivation (e.g., Pelletier et al, 1998).…”

Machiavellianism, stakeholder orientation, and support for sustainability reporting

“…However, companies should avoid overemphasizing pecuniary motivations to the exclusion of moral concerns, because financial concerns should be less value congruent for low Machiavellians and may actually decrease their motivation for honest sustainability reporting (cf. van den Broek et al, ).…”

“…Psychological studies suggest that educational interventions should be congruent with the values of target groups to be persuasive (Bashir, Lockwood, Dolderman, Sarkissian, & Quick, 2011;Bolderdijk, Corsira, Keizer, & Steg, 2013;Jost, Frederico, & Napier, 2009;van den Broek, Bolderdijk, & Steg, 2017). For instance, van den Broek et al (2017) found that educational campaign messages that emphasize the financial benefits of environmentally conscious behaviours were more effective for individuals with egoistic values, while an emphasis on protection of the environment was more effective for those with stronger biospheric values.…”

“…Future studies could address such issues by testing the relative effectiveness of training approaches that emphasize alternative motivations for sustainability reporting on the attitudes and beliefs of Machiavellians) to game the system by intentionally misreporting to maximize their compensation (see Knapp, 2015). 12 It has also been recognized that extrinsic rewards for prosocial practices may serve as a disincentive by reducing the intrinsic moral motivation for such behaviour (Hales et al, 2016;van den Broek et al, 2017), which should be particularly true in the case of low Machiavellians. Clearly, there is a need for on-going research to address such issues.…”