The Morality-Effectiveness Disconnect of Pro-Environmental Behaviors

Not all pro-environmental behaviors are created equal-some are vastly more effective at mitigating climate change than others. Do people judge the more effective behaviors as proportionally more moral? Five main and six supplemental studies (N = 9,247) across five countries reveal a robust morality-effectiveness disconnect: pro-environmental behaviors that rank better on objective climate-mitigation potential rank worse on individual moral judgments. Laypeople fail to predict this pattern, believing that a positive relationship exists. Furthermore, labeling behaviors by climate impact category reduces the morality-effectiveness disconnect, and detailed impact information reverses it and increases policy endorsement of more effective behaviors over less effective behaviors. While the disconnect primarily stems from effectiveness misperceptions that accurate information can mitigate, we find that personal support for less effective behaviors plays an additional role. Thus, people's moral intuition for climate action appears miscalibrated: moral cognition can undermine the collective welfare that such cognition should presumably promote.