This paper explores the potential for environmental information and dissonance-inducing messaging to encourage resourceful behaviour, following a study of customers of a renewable energy provider in the UK.<\/p>\n
It uses the manipulation of message framing to analyse behavioural motivators that businesses may consider when encouraging customers – in this case, those who already have revealed environmental preferences – to switch from paper to online communications.<\/p>\n
A large-scale natural field experiment was conducted, comprising 38,654 customers of Good Energy, in which Gosnell randomised environmental information and dissonance-inducing messaging to promote an active switch from paper to online billing.<\/p>\n
The author finds that environmental information and imagery are ineffective in inducing behaviour change. Interestingly, the dissonance-inducing messaging weakly improved uptake by 1.2 percentage points among the main sample but backfired among a subsample of individuals with doctoral educations, decreasing uptake by 6.2 percentage points relative to a control group. Females in the sample were less likely to switch to paperless billing than males: this runs contrary to the findings of the majority of the literature on gender and environmental behaviour.<\/p>\n
An earlier version of this paper was published in May 2017 under the title <\/em>Be who you ought or be who you are? Environmental framing and cognitive dissonance in going paperless and is available from the author on request. <\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n Following a study of customers of a renewable energy provider in the UK, this paper explores the potential for environmental information and dissonance-inducing messaging to encourage resourceful behaviour, finding that such information and imagery are ineffective in inducing behaviour change.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tags":[247,633,1163,1165,636,637,634,533,635,1164],"publication-type":[435],"topic_area":[4698],"class_list":["post-23792","publication","type-publication","status-publish","hentry","tag-behaviour","tag-cognitive-dissonance","tag-imagery","tag-message-framing","tag-messaging","tag-natural-field-experiment","tag-paperless-billing","tag-pro-environmental-behaviour","tag-renewable-energy","tag-resource-use","publication-type-working-papers","topic_area-behavioural-responses"],"acf":{"exclude_from_sync":{"ref_value":"field_560538b0e7350","value":"0","type":false,"post_type":""},"downloads":{"ref_value":"field_52f16cc1a80f2","value":["https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Working-Paper-269-Gosnell-June-2018.pdf"],"type":"download","post_type":""},"rss_newsletter":{"ref_value":"field_54f5c2c1544d8","value":"","type":false,"post_type":""},"profile_link":{"ref_value":"field_52f164b5189e9","value":["greer-gosnell"],"type":"relationship","post_type":"profile"},"spotlight":{"ref_value":"field_52f80896506d3","value":"","type":false,"post_type":""}},"yoast_head":"\n