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How lack of knowledge on emissions and psychological biases deter consumers from taking effective action to mitigate climate change

  • Original Empirical Research
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Abstract

In this research, we document knowledge gaps between consumers and experts about what consumer actions most effectively help mitigate climate change. We then identify three sources for lack of consumer knowledge on greenhouse gas emissions associated with consumption: carbon emissions labeling, awareness of indirect versus direct emissions, and orders of magnitude differences in carbon intensity across behaviors. We further propose that this lack of knowledge and several cognitive and motivational biases lead consumers away from effective climate actions, including the tendency to focus on first- versus second-order effects of “green” behaviors, motivated reasoning that easier, more accessible actions are more impactful, and a focus on individual behavior versus systemic changes. We close with a research agenda designed to address the lack of knowledge and biases we identify, while acknowledging that shifting marketers and consumers to focus on systemic changes may be both most challenging and most impactful.

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Data Availability

Original Qualtrics surveys, data, and code used to conduct analysis are stored on OSF: https://osf.io/q4rcn/?view_only=4cf128d638a34cecac943af3cbbff3a3.

Notes

  1. Just as mitigating climate change could be instrumental in addressing some of the other 16 SDGs, progress on other SDGs could help address the goal of successful climate action (e.g., 7: Affordable and Clean Energy and 12: Responsible Consumption and Production). However, given the interlinkages between SDGs, in some cases progress towards one goal could limit progress towards another (e.g., making progress on 10: Reduced Inequalities could result in greater consumption, increasing climate emissions and reducing progress on 13: Climate Action).

  2. This sample was recruited through a combination of sustainability and climate change research listservs with which the three authors had contacts. The starting point was a Research Coordination Network on the Digital Economy and the Environment organized by the National Science Foundation, of which the second and third authors were members. After the survey was sent to this organization, all three authors sent it to listservs for sustainability researchers either at their university or external listservs of which they were members. Because the expert listservs allowed us to capture responses from over a dozen countries, the expert sample is global while the two lay person samples are comprised of U.S. respondents. However, the majority (51%) of expert participants were from the U.S. See the Appendix for additional demographic detail on all three samples.

  3. The majority of respondents in each group indicated that climate change is caused mostly by human activities (95% of experts, 84% of students, and 75% of Mturk participants).

  4. We acknowledge that the expert ratings in our survey are subjective and not necessarily representative of the objective impact of each behavior. While expert ratings are arguably closer to the objective impact than that of lay people, there is nuance in the impact of each behavior that is not captured by these ratings. For example, when measuring the perceived impact of different modes of transportation, we did not account for the distance respondents travel each day. The impact of each behavior would vary if one has a five versus 60 mile commute.

  5. Carbon emissions are commonly used in consumer messaging regarding emissions in the marketplace and media (e.g., carbon footprint, carbon labels). Thus, we refer to carbon emissions in this section.

  6. Assuming 3974 km one way, at 0.193 kgCO2e per passenger-km.

  7. This would be a significant reduction from the current estimated 6.8tCO2e per person in the EU as of 2019 (Eurostat 2022).

  8. 3.7 kg CO2e to produce a quarter pound beef patty/burger on average vs. 0.4 kg CO2e for a plant-based burger by Beyond meat = 3.3 kg CO2e × 365 days/year = 1.2t reduction in CO2e (Heller and Keoleian 2018; Thoma et al., 2017).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the U.S. National Science Foundation for supporting the Research Coordination Network of the Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment (NetworkDEE.org) which provided a platform for interaction by the authors which led to this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, 407 Business Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Karen Page Winterich

  2. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, 2100 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Rebecca Walker Reczek

  3. Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management and Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.B. 653, 8410501, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Tamar Makov

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Correspondence to Rebecca Walker Reczek.

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Winterich, K.P., Reczek, R.W. & Makov, T. How lack of knowledge on emissions and psychological biases deter consumers from taking effective action to mitigate climate change. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-023-00981-z

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