Non-monetary reinforcement effects on pro-environmental behavior

IF 2.5 2区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Economic Psychology Pub Date : 2023-08-01 DOI:10.1016/j.joep.2023.102628

Florian Lange, Siegfried Dewitte

{"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.

查看原文本刊更多论文

对亲环境行为的非货币强化效应

虽然非货币强化经常作为一种有前途的干预技术被讨论，但对其促进亲环境行为的有效性的系统研究却很少。这种研究的缺乏可能是由于在现有的研究设计中研究非货币强化的困难。在这里，我们使用最近开发和验证的亲环境行为任务来检查非货币强化的影响。在两项预先登记的研究中(总N = 997)，参与者可以反复选择付出实际努力来换取对环保组织的捐赠。在他们的选择之后，要么有潜在的强化刺激(例如，赞美的话叠加在积极的图片上)，要么没有。在研究2中，当伴随着欢快的动物图片时，这些刺激显著促进了亲环境努力的支出，但在研究1中没有。长期效应和对非强化行为的溢出效应也进行了研究，但没有得到决定性的支持。这些发现说明了所提出的实验方法在研究非货币强化在社会相关领域的有效性方面的潜力。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Journal of Economic Psychology Multiple-

CiteScore

5.20

自引率

31.40%

发文量

审稿时长

63 days

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.