Speaker
Description
Recently, a call has been made to start leveraging the depth of knowledge already developed in the domain of prosocial behavior to better understand pro-environmental behavior. In this project, we aim to first approach the question of whether being more pro-environmental is simply about being more prosocial.
We use an experimental approach to investigate whether both concerns are as motivating for people when they are prompted to invest cognitive effort in a given task. The role of cognitive effort is pertinent when we think about climate change because fulfilling the required climate objectives is going to include changing our own behavior. This modification of our behavior requires cognitive effort for multiple reasons: the breaking of current habits, the need to learn new information, in essence the need to switch from a default mode of functioning to a more controlled mode of functioning.
The current paradigm entails a within-subject design comparing performance (i.e., accuracy) depending on the incentives for which participants are performing the task (pro-environmental vs. pro-social), as well as tracking the evolution of performance across three blocks.
The results show that between prosocial and pro-environmental, only the pro-environmental incentive motivates individuals to perform better compared to the baseline condition. However prosocial and pro-environmental incentives do not differ significantly from each other. Interestingly, the decrease in performance across the blocks is compensated depending on the type of incentive. These findings start to shed light on the overlaps and differences between prosocial and pro-environmental behavior.
| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
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