People are more likely to engage in green-friendly practices when they know others are doing the same, says a study examining the eco-conscious behavior of guests staying at a major hotel chain.

 

Study authors Noah J. Goldstein of the University of Chicago, Robert B. Cialdini, and Vladas Griskevicius, both of Arizona State University, distributed two kinds of cards to two groups of hotel guests. One group found signs in their bathrooms which read “Help Save the Environment" while the other group found cards saying "Join Your Fellow Guests in Helping to Save the Environment." Both signs provided information on how resources are preserved when guests re-use towels. Hotel guests who received cards asking them to re-use their towels to join fellow guests in saving the environment were more likely than those who received cards requesting they do so for the sole reason of helping save the earth.

 

Room attendants recorded the towel re-use rates of guests from both groups; those in the group which had received cards which described eco-friendly behavior of fellow guests demonstrated a nearly ten percentage point increase (44.1 percent) over those who had gotten cards which did not mention other guests, and focused only on the environment (35.1 percent).

 

"These experiments are aimed at better understanding the factors that motivate consumers to engage in actions for the benefit of the environment. This important topic, along with pro-social behavior in general, is a severely understudied area of consumer research," explain the authors.

 

The study’s message is important for those who want to encourage green habits. ”The results of our studies have clear implications for marketers, managers, and policymakers," write the authors. "It is worth noting that the normative messages, which were messages that we have never seen utilized by hotel chains, fared significantly better at spurring participation in the hotel's environmental conservation program than did the type of message most commonly utilized by hotel chains—messages that focus on the importance of environmental protection."

 

Social psychologist and environmentalist Jason D. Seacat, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Western New England College, specializes in conservation behavior. Seacat, who was not involved in the hotel study, says that this type of research is extremely valuable.

 

“Authors Goldstein, Cialdini, and Griskevicius touch upon an important, yet understudied predictor of pro-environmental behavior; namely, the influence of perceived pro-environmental norms,” Seacat states.

 

Prosocial influence, or positive peer pressure, has proven beneficial in other areas of research, Seacat says. “Though research on the use of positive social norms has been successfully applied in other domains of behavior—for example, safer sex and HIV prevention, and college binge drinking reduction—the application of norm-based interventions to enhance pro-environmental behavior has been limited,” he tells demo dirt.

 

Establishing prosocial behavior as a norm rather than as an exception, Seacat maintains, is an effective method in influencing people to take measure to save the environment. The researchers in the hotel study, he explains, presented a “norm-based intervention strategy” when they introduced hotel cards indicating that other guests re-used their towels to aid the environment.

 

“Attribution research would suggest that we are most likely to respond positively and to take action on environmental requests that we have a personal sense of connection to and responsibility for,” Seacat explains. “In the case of Goldstein et al. this sense of personal connectedness and responsibility were likely invoked by informing the customer that a majority of their peers are engaging in the desirable behavior.”

 

And when peers are practicing positive habits, we don’t want to be spoilsports. “Desire to be viewed in a positive light by their peers and a strong sense of personal connection/responsibility for the problem at hand likely influenced participants in the Goldstein et al. study to engage in the desired behavior,” Seacat explains.

 

The other factor which influences prosocial behavior, Seacat explains, is the level of difficulty involved in executing the positive task. Guests who chose to re-use their towels realized that doing so required little effort; they simply had to hang them on their towel racks.

 

“Research on behavioral self-efficacy and outcome expectancies suggests that in situations where one believes they have the necessary skills to perform a behavior and that the outcome of their behavioral actions will be positive; they become more likely to engage in the behavior,” Seacat says.

 

“By framing the request to conserve towels in the context of one’s peers (whom the participant can personally relate to) Goldstein and colleagues likely enhanced participants’ sense that they do have the skills necessary to perform the behavior and that their behaviors would result in a tangible positive outcome (being recognized by their peers and others as being pro-environmental),” he explains.

 

Why doesn’t just knowing that making a specific choice enough to persuade people to make that choice?

 

“Simply making an appeal to engage in pro-environmental behavior based on the welfare of the environment is a much more distal request and one in that people likely have a minimal sense of personal connection/responsibility for,” he says. “This type of campaign as the authors noted produces minimal consistent behavior.”

  

The best way for businesses, services and charities to influence people to engage in desired prosocial behavior, says the research, is to highlight that their peers already practice the same habits.

 

How to use this research to encourage people to do the right thing? “I would strongly suggest that pro-environmental interventions designed by corporations such as hotel chains tap in to peer-referenced, positively reinforcing campaigns to instill pro-environmental behaviors among their customers,” says the professor.

 

Peer influence is a generally positive way to influence people to go green, and negative tactics rarely work, Seacat says. Brow-beating is rarely effective; no matter how important the cause or how dire the circumstances, making people feel bad about themselves, he warns, can be counter-productive. “Fear, guilt, and shame tactics have been demonstrated to have a small influence in different domains (e.g., drunk driving) and may, in some instances, have the unanticipated result of fostering learned helplessness and diminishing personal motivation to perform any form of pro-environmental behavior,” he explains.

 

The best ways for companies to move customers? “Companies seeking to utilize peer-referenced, normative campaigns should focus on portraying the norms as believable, simple, proximally relevant, and should communicate to their customers some form of tangible benefit for engaging in the prescribed behavior whether it be positive social reinforcement from peers or a small discount on their next hotel stay,” Seacat concludes. “These factors will likely increase the potential for individual customers to immediately engage in the desired behavior and to continue engaging in this behavior during future hotel stays and in a variety of other situations.”