Using eco-guilt to motivate behaviour change seems not really supported by literature

Following up on what I wrote on Friday about how my colleague respond to her talking about sustainability issues with “don’t make me feel guilty”, I am exploring eco-guilt as a search term that seems to produce quite a different set of results. In contrast to the literature I summarised on Friday, where guilt is described as a deactivating emotion that needs to be changed into constructive hope in order to lead to action, the studies below mostly describe guilt as an emotion that can (and should) be used to promote environmental friendly behaviour. But I do not think those studies are super convincing, so better proceed with caution here…

Moore and Yang (2020) investigate “using eco-guilt to motivate environmental behaviour change”. They do this in the interesting context of video games and in a lab study, but find that what people experience within the game can have consequences outside of it.  In their first study, they test the effect on behaviour by offering participants a drink during a break of the testing, in either a plastic or styrofoam cup, and use participants choosing the plastic cup as a sign of better environmental behaviour because plastic is recyclable (I find this maybe not as conclusive as they do, depending on whether recyclability has been addressed explicitly in the game and also what the trash bin situation looks like — do people even have the chance to sort the plastic cup with recyclable materials, or is there only one bin available to them in whatever room they have their break in? Also, as they acknowledge, peopl). And another measure of post-intervention behaviour, participants were exposed to a plastic water bottle on the floor, and carrying it to a recycling bin was the good environmental behaviour (which I find also weird. Maybe if they had been walking outside where there was a risk of the bottle blowing into the sea or something, but in a hallway where they presumably have cleaning crews coming through every day?). So they find that this study does not support their hypotheses and the game does not influence any pro-environment intentions or behaviour. In their second study, which they conduct on a more “high quality” pool of participants, and online (and therefore cannot do any of the trash tests), they find that being exposed to the game’s trailer was slightly correlated to better behavioural intentions, but eco-guilt was significantly correlated. They also find that the response is strongest for people who were less pro-environment in their pre-tests. They conclude that “promoting insecurity and perhaps guilt for lack of action may [create] a desire to strengthen our moral behaviour in the future.” So what does this study mean for what my colleague should do? Not a lot, I think, since we know that behavioural intentions do not say much about actual behaviour later…

Mallett (2012) has a strong claim already in the title of the article: “Eco-guilt motivates eco-friendly behavior”. Let’s see! In their first study, they find that eco-guilt is independent of eco-shame, and that eco-guilt is positively related to good environmental intentions. In their second study, they find that believing that one should feel bad about harming the environment is related to eco-guilt. Their measure of willingness to take action is whether participants choose a button with an environmental message over one that is designed to be equally appealing but with a neutral message (wellllll…….). A key finding is that reminding people how they should feel about eco-related decisions creates eco-guilt “which then motivates efforts to protect the environment (e.g., support for a proenvironmental organization, publicly expressing eco-friendly beliefs).” Again, not a super strong case for inducing eco-guilt to change peoples’ behaviour, me thinks…

Rees, Klug & Bamberg (2015) write about “Guilty conscience: motivating pro-environmental behavior by inducing negative moral emotions”. Here, the action that is used to measure pro-environmental action is whether participants are willing to sign a petition, so this sounds promising! They find that being exposed to information about human-caused environmental damage (vs seemingly natural damages) caused strong emotional reactions, i.e. a guilty conscience. This predicts environmentally friendly behavioural intentions AND behaviour. They warn, however, to not prematurely implement their findings in interventions without more theoretical and empirical grounding.

Kleres & Wettergren (2017) investigate “fear, hope, anger, and guilt in climate activism”. In this study, they interview young climate activists and find that fear motivates action if it is mediated by hope (otherwise it might paralyse). Here, guilt is, in the first place, not about feeling guilty personally as in the articles above, but about assigning responsibility to, for example, the global north (which happens in interviews with participants from the global south, where it can be transformed into anger that leads to action). In the global north, though, guilt/blaming are perceived as inefficient in producing mobilisation and the focus is on sending positive and hopeful messages. However, activists describe their own personal feelings of guilt as motivating their activism. But since this article is about how climate activists think about what kind of messaging is effective, this doesn’t really help us understand how to respond to people expressing that they do not want to be made feel guilty.

So much reading for today then! Featured image from training yesterday, just because I like it.

Kleres, J., & Wettergren, Å. (2017). Fear, hope, anger, and guilt in climate activism. Social movement studies, 16(5), 507-519.

Mallett, R. K. (2012). Eco-guilt motivates eco-friendly behavior. Ecopsychology, 4(3), 223-231.

Moore, M. M., & Yang, J. Z. (2020). Using eco-guilt to motivate environmental behavior change. Environmental Communication, 14(4), 522-536. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17524032.2019.1692889

Rees, J. H., Klug, S., & Bamberg, S. (2015). Guilty conscience: motivating pro-environmental behavior by inducing negative moral emotions. Climatic change, 130, 439-452.