{"title":"Non-monetary reinforcement effects on pro-environmental behavior","authors":"Florian Lange, Siegfried Dewitte","doi":"10.1016/j.joep.2023.102628","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While non-monetary reinforcement is often discussed as a promising intervention technique, systematic research on its effectiveness for the promotion of pro-environmental behavior has been scarce. This lack of research is likely due to the difficulty of studying non-monetary reinforcement within existing study designs. Here, we examined the effects of non-monetary reinforcement using a recently developed and validated pro-environmental behavior task. In two preregistered studies (total <em>N</em> = 997), participants could repeatedly choose to exert actual effort in exchange for donations to an environmental organization. Their choices were either followed by potentially reinforcing stimuli (e.g., words of praise superimposed on positively valenced pictures) or not. When accompanied by cheerful animal pictures, these stimuli significantly promoted pro-environmental effort expenditure in Study 2, but not in Study 1. Longer-term effects and spillover to non-reinforced behavior were also examined, but not conclusively supported. These findings illustrate the potential of the presented experimental approach for studying the effectiveness of non-monetary reinforcement in societally relevant domains.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487023000296","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
While non-monetary reinforcement is often discussed as a promising intervention technique, systematic research on its effectiveness for the promotion of pro-environmental behavior has been scarce. This lack of research is likely due to the difficulty of studying non-monetary reinforcement within existing study designs. Here, we examined the effects of non-monetary reinforcement using a recently developed and validated pro-environmental behavior task. In two preregistered studies (total N = 997), participants could repeatedly choose to exert actual effort in exchange for donations to an environmental organization. Their choices were either followed by potentially reinforcing stimuli (e.g., words of praise superimposed on positively valenced pictures) or not. When accompanied by cheerful animal pictures, these stimuli significantly promoted pro-environmental effort expenditure in Study 2, but not in Study 1. Longer-term effects and spillover to non-reinforced behavior were also examined, but not conclusively supported. These findings illustrate the potential of the presented experimental approach for studying the effectiveness of non-monetary reinforcement in societally relevant domains.
期刊介绍:
The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.