Abstract
With concerns regarding climate change rising, companies and policy makers seek to understand the precursors to environmentally-friendly consumer choice. Decision modes are the qualitatively different psychological processes employed to arrive at decisions. Across six studies, the present project establishes (a) which decision modes are employed by consumers to decide between electricity plans that differ in environmental impact, and (b) how employed decision modes affect those choices. We demonstrate that consumers are most likely to use Calculation Modes when facing such choices. Importantly, we find that Affect or Role Modes promote more environmentally-friendly choices, while Calculation Modes decrease environmentally-friendly choices. Experimentally promoting use of a Role Mode over a Calculation Mode increases selection of environmentally-friendly alternatives, and the relative degree of employing the Role Mode mediates this effect. Our findings provide insight into how decision mode usage can alter environmental decisions, and suggest mechanisms and tools for marketers and policy makers to influence consumer choice.
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Notes
Similar measures were incorporated for Supplemental Study 1, Study 3, and Study 4. Generally speaking, the effects of decision modes on choice were not driven by variability in demographics, attitudes, personality differences, or other measured individual differences. The details of these analyses are available in the Web Appendix.
Supplemental analyses using just two-items for each mode revealed significant effects in the expected direction for both the Affect (β = 0.70, p < 0.001) and Calculation (β = − 0.58, p = 0.025) modes, but not the Role mode (β = 0.03, p = 0.887).
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge support from a grant from the National Science Foundation of Switzerland, project no. P1SGP1_158812 and from the Environmental Defense Fund. Furthermore, this research project is financially supported by the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse and is part of the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research SCCER CREST.
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Reeck, C., Gamma, K. & Weber, E.U. How we decide shapes what we choose: decision modes track consumer decisions that help decarbonize electricity generation. Theory Decis 92, 731–758 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-022-09874-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-022-09874-z