title: Advertising energy saving programs: The potential environmental cost of emphasizing monetary savings.
abstract: Many consumers have monetary or environmental motivations for saving energy. Indeed, saving energy produces both monetary benefits, by reducing energy bills, and environmental benefits, by reducing carbon footprints. We examined how consumers' willingness and reasons to enroll in energy-savings programs are affected by whether advertisements emphasize monetary benefits, environmental benefits, or both. From a normative perspective, having 2 noteworthy kinds of benefit should not decrease a program's attractiveness. In contrast, psychological research suggests that adding external incentives to an intrinsically motivating task may backfire. To date, however, it remains unclear whether this is the case when both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are inherent to the task, as with energy savings, and whether removing explicit mention of extrinsic motivation will reduce its importance. We found that emphasizing a program's monetary benefits reduced participants' willingness to enroll. In addition, participants' explanations about enrollment revealed less attention to environmental concerns when programs emphasized monetary savings, even when environmental savings were also emphasized. We found equal attention to monetary motivations in all conditions, revealing an asymmetric attention to monetary and environmental motives. These results also provide practical guidance regarding the positioning of energy-saving programs: emphasize intrinsic benefits; the extrinsic ones may speak for themselves.
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Engineering.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: Centre for Decision Research, Leeds University Business School.
authors.forename: Wändi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Bruine de Bruin
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University.
authors.forename: Baruch
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fischhoff
authors.forename: Lester
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lave
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000329:Advertising / Q000379:methods*; D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000191:economics*; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003657:Decision Making; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D055815:Young Adult