Jerit Jennifer, Shin Hwayong, Barabas Jason
Department of Government, Dartmouth College, 3 Tuck Mall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, 6082 Rockefeller Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Nov 13;3(12):pgae509. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae509. eCollection 2024 Dec.
For climate mitigation to be successful, vast numbers of people must change how they go about daily life. Social scientists have tried to promote environmentally sustainable (i.e. "green") behavior with interventions involving cues, frames, and information, but the cumulative impact of those efforts has been modest. A growing number of studies-largely observational-suggests the promise of "warm glow" messaging that features the pleasure and satisfaction one experiences from acting sustainably. While past work has established the association between intrinsic motivations and green behavior, our study offers evidence regarding the causal effect of warm glow feelings in the climate domain. In three survey experiments administered on different national samples, we induce feelings of warm glow and examine the impact on green behavioral intentions. The treatment, an adaptation of a standard feeling induction, has a significant influence on a wide range of actions-an effect that is distinct from the influence of general positivity. Most importantly, we observe the largest treatment effects in surprising places: among Republicans, and within this subgroup, on more socially visible activities. Manipulated warm glow also increases intentions to engage in more difficult (e.g. costly, effortful) activities. Our findings are valuable for scholars and practitioners seeking to promote broad-based climate mitigation across the ideological spectrum.
为使气候缓解取得成功，大量民众必须改变其日常生活方式。社会科学家曾试图通过涉及线索、框架和信息的干预措施来促进环境可持续（即“绿色”）行为，但这些努力的累积影响并不大。越来越多的研究（主要是观察性研究）表明，“温暖光辉”信息传递具有前景，这种信息传递强调了人们从可持续行动中获得的愉悦和满足感。虽然过去的研究已经确立了内在动机与绿色行为之间的关联，但我们的研究提供了关于气候领域中温暖光辉情感因果效应的证据。在对不同国家样本进行的三项调查实验中，我们诱发了温暖光辉的感觉，并考察其对绿色行为意图的影响。这种处理方式是对标准情感诱发方式的一种改编，对广泛的行为有着显著影响——这种影响与一般积极情绪的影响不同。最重要的是，我们在一些出人意料的群体中观察到了最大的处理效应：在共和党人中，以及在这个亚群体中，对更具社会可见性的活动产生影响。被操控的温暖光辉还会增加人们参与更困难（如成本高、费力）活动的意图。我们的研究结果对于寻求在整个意识形态范围内促进广泛的气候缓解的学者和从业者来说具有重要价值。
