What Influences People's Tradeoff Decisions Between CO₂ Emissions and Travel Time? An Experiment With Anchors and...

One of the today's greatest challenges is to adjust our behavior so that we can avoid a major climate disaster. To do so, we must make sacrifices for the sake of the environment. The study reported here investigates how anchors (extrinsic motivational-free information) and normative messages (extrinsic motivational information) influence people's tradeoffs between travel time and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the context of car travel and whether any interactions with environmental concern (an intrinsic motivational factor) can be observed. In this study, people received either a CO₂, health or no normative message together with either a high anchor, a low anchor, or no anchor. People that received both a high anchor and a CO₂ emission normative message were willing to travel for a longer time than those that only received a high anchor. If a low anchor was presented, no differences in willingness to travel for a longer time were found between the three different conditions of normative message groups, i.e., CO₂ normative message, health normative message, or no normative message. People with higher concern for the environment were found to be willing to travel for a longer time than those with lower concern for the environment. Further, this effect was strongest when a high anchor was presented. These results suggest that anchors and normative messages are among the many factors that can influence people's tradeoffs between CO₂ emission and travel time, and that various factors may have to be combined to increase their influence over pro-environmental behavior and decisions.