Comparing Goal Setting Approaches to Boosting Pro-Environmental Behaviors

Background: Corporations face challenges to adopting appropriate practices to effectively respond to environmental sustainability concerns. To help address this, the present research focuses on improving employees’ pro-environmental behaviors related mostly to information technology and system use. To do so, we draw on and extend goal-setting theory by comparing three goal interventions: goal-setting, goal-setting plus implementation plans, and goal-setting with both implementation plans and visualization of success. For these, we also examine the role of individuals’ environmental values as well as their conflicts with competing goals. Methods: Two longitudinal studies examine individuals’ self-set goals: the first examines employees’ computer-based electricity usage in the workplace over six weeks and the second utilizes a diary approach method over four weeks to examine the effects of different environmental goal setting conditions on students’ environmental outcomes. The impacts of environmental values (self-congruence) and conflicting goals are also explored in the second study. Results: Both studies find that setting goals increases pro-environmental behaviors. However, rebound effects can occur when interventions are removed. Visualization of success appears to reduce this rebound effect and we suggest that future research continue to investigate methods for reducing rebound. Conclusions: This paper contributes to environmental sustainability research in several ways: conceptually (by responding to calls for more theory-based research), methodologically (by measuring objective computer-based energy usage in study 1 and by utilizing a diary method in study 2), and practically (by demonstrating the effectiveness of visualization to goal setting and exploring the role of competing goals in this process).