Feel good, stay green: Positive affect promotes pro-environmental behaviors and mitigates compensatory “mental bookkeeping” effects

摘要: To counteract climate change people should adopt lifestyles consisting of numerous pro-environmental actions, across different domains, sustained over long time periods. Thus, it is important to understand how initial behaviors can impact the likelihood subsequent behaviors. We tested hypothesis that use mental bookkeeping past behaviors, allowing them limit after having performed similar ones, and investigated role affect in this context. Participants read campaign messages framed affectively neutral (Experiment 1) or positive/negative 2), followed by fictitious scenarios which they could perform a second behavior shown first one. indicated smaller willingness act pro-environmentally if were similar. Positive increased showing mitigated negative spillover driven behavioral similarity. However, observed effect sizes are too small be practical relevance for developing efficient intervention strategies.