Does reflection on past group behavior or reflection on past individual behavior, has a greater impact on the intentions to perform an environmental behavior in the future?

Kitsis, Georgios (2024) Does reflection on past group behavior or reflection on past individual behavior, has a greater impact on the intentions to perform an environmental behavior in the future? Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Climate change is getting severe and entails high risks. People need to perform more pro-environmental behaviors. We used behavioral spillover to explore how and why people are engaging in future pro-environmental behaviors after they have performed an initial one. Previous research argued that, if people reflect on their past individual pro-environmental behavior, they intent to follow with pro-environmental behaviors in the future. The current research argues that, if people focus on their past group behavior, it will also increase their intentions to perform pro-environmental behaviors in the future. Our first hypothesis was that, reflecting on our past individual behavior, will lead to positive spillover. The second hypothesis was that, reflecting on our past group behavior, will also lead to positive spillover. The third hypothesis argued that, future intentions to perform an environmental behavior will be higher when individuals reflect on past group behavior in comparison to past individual behavior. We also manipulated the difficulty to perform the future environmental behavior. We created a questionnaire based on circular economy behaviors and we gave it to students that currently study in the Netherlands. We found that both reflecting on individual and group past behavior, are positively correlated with the intentions to perform an environmental behavior in the future. Regarding our third hypothesis, we did not find a difference in the intentions to perform pro-environmental behaviors in the future between reflecting on their individual or their group’s past pro-environmental behaviors. Our conclusion was that both reflecting on individual and group past behavior, can influence the individuals into the adoption of sustainable behaviors regardless of the difficulty of the future behavior.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Sharpe, E.J.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	01 Mar 2024 09:44
Last Modified:	01 Mar 2024 09:44
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3179

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