Siegmar Otto

Attitudes and Defaults Save Lives and Protect the Environment Jointly and Compensatorily: Understanding the Behavioral Efficacy of Nudges and Other Structural Interventions

A better understanding of when and why nudges (e.g., defaults, visibility or accessibility alterations) and other structural behavior-change measures work or fail can help avoid subsequent surprises such as unexpected political opposition. In this paper, we challenge the unilateral focus on structural interventions—which seemingly control peoples behavioral decisions—as such a focus ignores the flipside—namely, attitudes or, as they are called in economics, preferences. We argue for a conceptual understanding of individual behavior that views personal attitudes and behavioral costs as its two separate compensatorily effective determinants. This classical understanding was reintroduced into attitude research as the Campbell paradigm. In the logic of the Campbell paradigm, a persons attitude becomes obvious in the face of the behavioral costs the person surmounts. Technically, individual attitudes reveal themselves in a set of cost-dependent transitively ordered performances. Behavioral costs in turn reflect the structural boundary conditions that are relevant as obstructive and/or supportive environmental forces that generically affect a specific behavior. So far, our research on people’s attitudes toward environmental protection has demonstrated that the Campbell paradigm—and thus its conceptual account of individual behavior—holds true for approximately 95% of the people in a given society.

Explaining the Ambiguous Relations Between Income, Environmental Knowledge, and Environmentally Significant Behavior

ABSTRACT The effects of income on environmentally significant behavior (i.e., behavior that does have an effect on the environment, such as traveling and waste disposal) have been strong but equivocal. The relation between knowledge and environmentally significant behavior has attracted even greater interest, but relations have been weak and explanations diverse. These findings have been based on samples in industrialized countries with relatively narrow income distributions, and this may have attenuated a clear understanding of the relations between income, environmental knowledge, and environmentally significant behavior. Using a Chilean sample (N = 1785) with a relatively wide income distribution, we found a parsimonious explanation for the ambiguous results of previous studies. Income had a much stronger and differential effect on environmentally significant behaviors, suggesting that when income affects the situation that influences behavior, it trumps knowledge or attitudes.

Childhood Origins of Young Adult Environmental Behavior

Prospective, longitudinal analyses revealed that over a 12-year period from ages 6 to 18, individuals who grew up with mothers with more proenvironmental attitudes engaged in more proenvironmental behavior as young adults. A similar marginal association was uncovered between mothers’ proenvironmental behaviors and the proenvironmental behavior of their young adult offspring. Maternal educational attainment, but not political ideology, was also associated with more proenvironmental behavior as children matured. Moreover, childhood time spent outdoors was positively associated with increased environmentally responsible behavior in young adulthood. Interestingly, one’s own childhood proenvironmental behavior and attitude, at least as assessed at age 6, bear little on one’s eventual proenvironmental behavior as a young adult. Finally, among this set of childhood factors, maternal education and childhood time spent outdoors were independent predictors of positive changes in environmental behavior from early childhood to young adulthood.

A diagnostic Environmental Knowledge Scale for Latin America / Escala diagnóstica de conocimientos ambientales para Latinoamérica

Abstract In this paper we present a new scale for the assessment of environmental knowledge in the Latin American Region (EKLA) based on the Rasch model. The scale was validated within two Latin American samples (Argentina, N = 168 and Colombia, N = 130). Comparing the level of environmental knowledge in both countries, the general prevalence of environmental knowledge was higher in the Argentinean sample. Nevertheless, some specific items were easier for the Colombian sample. As the EKLA scale considers the different item difficulties in the respective countries, it gives indications for cultural and geographical factors that have an influence on environmental knowledge. The scale can further be used to inform practitioners and policymakers about relevant environmental knowledge gaps. For the samples in both countries a relationship of environmental knowledge with ecological behaviour was found.

On the relation between social dominance orientation and environmentalism : a 25-nation study.

Approval of hierarchy and inequality in society indexed by social dominance orientation (SDO) extends to support for human dominance over the natural world. We tested this negative association between SDO and environmentalism and the validity of the new Short Social Dominance Orientation Scale in two cross-cultural samples of students (N = 4,163, k = 25) and the general population (N = 1,237, k = 10). As expected, the higher people were on SDO, the less likely they were to engage in environmental citizenship actions, pro-environmental behaviors and to donate to an environmental organization. Multilevel moderation results showed that the SDO–environmentalism relation was stronger in societies with marked societal inequality, lack of societal development, and environmental standards. The results highlight the interplay between individual psychological orientations and social context, as well as the view of nature subscribed to by those high in SDO.

The dominance of introspective measures and what this implies: The example of environmental attitude

The behavioral sciences, including most of psychology, seek to explain and predict behavior with the help of theories and models that involve concepts (e.g., attitudes) that are subsequently translated into measures. Currently, some subdisciplines such as social psychology focus almost exclusively on measures that demand reflection or even introspection when administered to persons. We argue that such a focus hinders progress in explaining behavior. One major reason is that such an exclusive focus on reflections results in common method bias, which then produces spurious relations, or in other words, low discriminant validity. Without the valid measurement of theoretical concepts, theoretical assumptions cannot be tested, and hence, theory development will be hampered. We argue that the use of a greater variety of methods would reduce these problems and would in turn foster theory building. Using a representative sample of N = 472 participants (age: M = 51.0, SD = 17.7; 54% female), we compared the validity of a classical introspective attitude measure (i.e., the New Ecological Paradigm) with that of an alternative attitude measure (i.e., the General Ecological Behavior scale). The latter measure, which was based on self-reported behavior, showed substantially better validity that we argue could aid theory development.

Prosocial Propensity Bias in Experimental Research on Helping Behavior: The Proposition of a Discomforting Hypothesis

When researchers fail to control for confounding factors, the causes of behavior can be more apparent than real, even in experimental research. The current study replicates an experiment by Weinstein, Przybylski, and Ryan (2009) with the goal of demonstrating that their main finding could have resulted from differences in peoples prosocial propensity. In their research, they found their hypothesized interaction effect: depending on the extent of immersion, participants presented with images of nature were found to be more prosocial in both their actions and in their declarations. Our sample of 175 adults (M age = 29.7 yr., SD = 11.7; 97 men, 78 women) was approached personally, randomly assigned to viewing either urban or nature images, and instructed to immerse themselves in the respective images. Using two formally distinct measures of participants’ prosocial propensity (i.e., before and after the intervention), the hypothesis that individual differences in peoples prosocial propensity can bias conclu...

Der Ecotainment-Index zur Messung der kognitiv-emotionalen Beteiligung an TV-Beiträgen

Zusammenfassung. TV-Zuschauer/innen, die bislang Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeits-Themen gegenuber resistent waren, sollen mithilfe des Ecotainment-Konzeptes erreicht werden. Dieses erfordert eine positive Auseinandersetzung auf kognitiv-emotionaler Ebene. Um TV-Beitrage zum Thema Nachhaltigkeit im Hinblick auf ihr kognitives und emotionales Wirkungspotenzial einschatzen zu konnen, wurde ein in der Praxis handhabbares Instrument entwickelt, das in der Lage ist, folgende wichtige Aspekte zu ermitteln: Werden Angebote fur disperse Zuschauergruppen unterbreitet? Enthalt der zu untersuchende Beitrag ausreichend Aspekte der Nachhaltigkeit? Wie reagieren Zuschauer/innen kognitiv und emotional auf die Beitrage?

Mindfully Green and Healthy: An Indirect Path from Mindfulness to Ecological Behavior

This paper examines the nature of the link between mindfulness and ecological behavior. Based on the notion that mindfulness incorporates heightened awareness of bodily sensations, we suggest an indirect path from mindfulness to ecological behavior that is mediated through individual health behavior, such as improved nutrition and increased exercise. This indirect path is corroborated with two online studies (n = 147/n = 239) where mindfulness, personal health behavior and ecological behavior were assessed. We conclude that increased mindful awareness of momentary experience indeed favors more healthy lifestyles, which in turn relate to increased ecological behavior beyond personal health benefits. The findings support an agreeableness of personal and planetary health behavior and open up a path for environmental educational interventions based on mindfulness practices and personal health gains.

Die Praxis der Energiewende, ihre zwei Determinanten aus psychologischer Sicht und wie man Rebound vermeiden kann

Vor dem Hintergrund des Klimawandels wird eine Reduktion des Energiekonsums uber Effizienzmasnahmen angestrebt. Allerdings werden die Effizienzgewinne durch zusatzlichen Konsum oft zum grosen Teil wieder aufgefressen – dem Rebound. Nur wenn Konsumenten auf diesen zusatzlichen Konsum verzichten und generell sparsamer mit Energie umgehen, kann die Energiewende gelingen. In diesem Kapitel wird dargestellt, warum diese psychologische Betrachtung so wichtig ist und dazu beitragen kann, den Pro-Kopf-Energieverbrauch tatsachlich zu reduzieren. Hierzu wird Energiesparen als Umweltschutzverhalten basierend auf den zwei Determinanten Verhaltenskosten und Umweltschutzmotivation erklart und anhand aktuell relevanter Beispiele (der Anschaffung von Fotovoltaikanlagen und der Smart-Meter-Nutzung) veranschaulicht. Anschliesend wird darauf eingegangen, wie die Umweltschutzmotivation, und damit das Energiesparen, zum Beispiel durch Naturerfahrung gefordert werden kann und ein suffizienter Lebensstil zur Vermeidung von Rebound beitragen kann.