Lolita Rubens

Being a Hypocrite or Committed While I Am Shopping? A Comparison of the Impact of Two Interventions on Environmentally Friendly Behavior

Commitment and the hypocrisy paradigm are two models used to convince people to adopt proenvironmental behaviors. The aim of the present study is to compare the effect of those interventions with a delay between the intervention and the observation of the behavior as this has not been investigated yet. People in a Parisian supermarket were asked to commit themselves by signing a poster advocating the target behavior: no use of plastic bags (commitment condition). Some of them were also asked to remember past transgressions to arouse cognitive dissonance (hypocrisy condition). Attention was paid to whether participants took free plastic bags. Our results showed that participants in the commitment condition were more likely to change their behavior than the participants in the control condition and in the hypocrisy condition. In a final section, implications for the two models are discussed.

How do French social housing tenants interpret normative descriptive feedback connected with energy? / ¿Cómo interpretan los inquilinos de vivienda social en Francia los mensajes normativos descriptivos respecto al consumo de energía?

Abstract Energy-efficient houses are designed to reduce electricity. However, a gap between theoretical and actual energy performance of buildings is often observed. Achieving energy efficiency through regulatory norms is insufficient, and ways must be found to change people’s behaviours. In this line, normative feedback could be a powerful tool to reduce residential energy consumption. In the present research, 14 low-energy buildings were equipped to measure energy consumption. Their occupants received descriptive normative messages used to promote household energy saving. We were interested in the quantitative impact of normative feedback on household consumption, but also in the way in which these households receive the information linked to normative feedback and how they adapt to it. The results showed that energy-efficient houses are not an environment in which people could learn new practices if they do not have knowledgeable pre-requisites. A normative feedback can help change habits only for people who have the knowledge regarding energy issues that allows them to understand the feedback. For most households, the information is not understood and does not lead to behavioural change.