Understanding and increasing global effort for environmental benefit

Would you rather walk to work or drive in a car? Do you wash and sort all your waste for recycling or throw it all in one bin? The global threat of climate change means there is an urgent need for people around the world to choose behaviours that benefit the environment. Recent evidence shows psychological interventions can influence pro-environmental attitudes and intentions (Vlasceanu et al., 2024), but little experimental research has examined whether

any such psychological interventions also change behaviour. Addressing this question is fundamental for promoting behaviours that mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on health, and food and water security (IPCC, 2023).

Pro-environmental behaviours often require exerting more effort than alternative behaviours (Wang et al., 2020; Krebs et al., 2023). Yet, evidence shows that people are averse to exerting effort (Hull, 1943; Chong et al., 2017). When choosing between a more effortful or a less effortful behaviour for the same personal benefit, individuals often select the less effortful option (Chong et al., 2017).

Moreover, people are less willing to engage in effortful behaviours that benefit others, compared to those that benefit themselves (Lockwood et al., 2017). Aversion to exerting effort may therefore be a significant barrier to engage in actions that reduce climate change (Dreijerink et al., 2022).

Across 4 studies, I will combine a novel experimental task and big data approaches with multivariate statistical analysis and the latest advances in computational modelling. These tools will help understand what motivates people, across the globe, to exert effort to benefit the climate and establish which psychological interventions increase pro-environmental motivation.

The experimental task will be based on existing studies from Dr. Apps' lab (Contreras-Huerta et al., 2020) to precisely measure individuals' willingness to exert effort to benefit the environment (n = 40 in the lab) and validate its use online (n = 150). On each round of the task, participants decide whether to exert effort (varying percentages of their maximum number of button-clicks in 10s) to obtain financial rewards either for themselves, an environmental charity (WWF climate recovery fund), or a non- climate, control charity (WFP food fund).

I will then apply new techniques in computational modelling (Matthews et al., 2023) to precisely quantify how motivated individuals are to exert effort for the environment specifically, compared to personal benefit and the non-climate cause. In addition to this, across three groups (total n = 1500), I will assess interventions focusing on reducing psychological distance (Jones et al., 2017), writing a letter to future generations (Wickersham et al., 2020), and emphasising negative emotions (Chapman et al., 2017).

Additionally, measures like climate change concern (Dreijerink et al., 2022) and apathy-motivation index (Ang et al., 2017), will be assessed. Collecting data from a diverse and representative sample across multiple countries, will improve the robustness of the model. Therefore, this project will provide a new theoretical understanding of how different psychological interventions increase motivation to exert effort for environmental benefit and how this willingness changes across different countries around the globe.