Speaker
Description
Addressing the climate crisis requires urgent transitions in all sectors of society. Psychological research can help enable these transitions by investigating barriers and facilitators of pro-environmental behaviour. Cognitive effort is a characteristic but understudied feature of many pro-environmental behaviours, and traditionally, it is mostly discussed as a barrier that keeps people from behaving pro-environmentally. In contrast, contemporary frameworks of cognitive effort show that effort can also be beneficial, for example, by increasing the subjective value of an outcome from an effortful action. This observation that effort can be both, a cost and source of value, has been termed the “effort paradox”.
In a series of experimental studies, we investigated the effort paradox in the context of pro-environmental behaviour. We probed participants’ willingness to invest cognitive effort for pro-environmental outcomes (profiting a pro-environmental organization) and how this differs from cognitive effort for personal outcomes (profiting the individual). We also tested after effects of having spent effort on generating pro-environmental outcomes on subsequent donation decisions. Overall, we find that (1) individuals are less motivated to spend cognitive effort for pro-environmental outcomes compared to self-benefitting outcomes, that (2) effort can act as a cost preventing spending effort in the future and (3) it can act as a source of value after having spent effort. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for donations to non-profit environmental organizations and how it can inform behaviour change interventions.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | Yes |
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| 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 |
