Mental Accounting of Effort Invested in Pro-Environmental Behaviors. A Scenario Study

Abstract

In order to limit climate change it is important that people perform not only easy but also difficult pro-environmental behaviors. Studies suggest that people factor the difficulty and effort invested in previous pro-environmental behaviors into their future behaviors, and that people might track the effort made previously to act pro-environmentally. We examined if people apply mental and moral accounting principles that are known to simplify (financial) decision making, to keep track of pro-environmental effort. We developed a scenario experiment with a 2(effort: high vs low) × 2(account: within vs outside) × 2(domain: mobility vs food) between-subjects design with control group ( n = 1,536). We found no evidence for our expectations with regard to mental and moral accounting principles, including underconsumption, booking and moral licensing. However, mental accounting appeared to play a role in environmental mobility decision making, especially when people recently invested little effort to behave pro-environmentally. We describe the possible roles of integrating or segregating effort spent in different behavior domains, and moral cleansing. In addition, we propose that tracking of previously invested effort in pro-environmental behavior may combine multiple factors, including mental accounting principles, moral aspects and environmental identity, where one aspect may work against the other.

Keywords: mental accounting, effort, moral licensing, underconsumption, identity