Nudging low-carbon consumption through advertising and social norms

This paper concludes "It suggests that low-carbon norms have a limited effectiveness in changing consumer preferences in a world dominated by advertising." "In the presence of advertising for highly known carbon-intensive brands, communicating a social norm is insufficient to induce relevant behavioral changes towards low-carbon consumption."

Abstract
"Widespread advertising of high-carbon goods challenges a shift to low-carbon consumption which is needed to limit climate change. We test the pure and combined effects of advertising and communicating a social norm on low- and high-carbon consumption. This involved presenting to 2728 US citizens an imitation Facebook homepage containing green and non-green advertising as well as weak and strong social norms to nudge low-carbon consumption. In isolation, both green advertising and social norms were effective in promoting low-carbon choices. But when combined, advertising dominated choice and counteracted the positive effects of the social norm. We show that this result is due to advertising affecting more decision channels than the social norm. It suggests that low-carbon norms have a limited effectiveness in changing consumer preferences in a world dominated by advertising."

 Fragments from the paper

"Mitigating climate change requires that consumption patterns change towards low-carbon. At the same time, consumers are being swamped with product advertisements incentivizing high-carbon con­sumption. It is estimated that the average American is exposed to around 4000 to 10,000 advertisements daily (Marshall, 2013), the majority of which are for high-carbon products, that is, those which emit consid­erable CO2 emissions over their lifecycle."

"Studies indi­cate that advertising may explain up to 65% of the total variance in consumption patterns (Brulle & Young, 2007). Against this background, relevant questions are whether advertising for high-carbon products reduces the effectiveness of climate policies aimed at controlling emis­sions associated with consumption, and whether green advertising, i.e. advertising for low-carbon products, can promote consumption of low-carbon alternatives."

"Images of nature in advertising have higher positive effects on brand attitude than textual information about environmental benefits."

"When combined, we observed a dominance of advertising in discouraging (non-green adverts) or incentivizing (green adverts) low-carbon choice. This suggests that in the presence of advertising for highly known carbon-intensive brands, communicating a social norm is insufficient to induce relevant behavioral changes towards low-carbon consumption. Similarly, in the presence of green advertising, commu­nicating a social norm adds little."

"Finally, while the obtained results could be interpreted as a sup­porting the belief that commercial green advertising by firms is an effective way to encourage the consumption of low-carbon alternatives, the risk of misinformation and false green claims remains a reason for skepticism. It is known that consumers tend to perceive any product that claims to be “green” in some dimension as being less environmentally harmful in general. Even people that are well informed or have
pro-environmental inclinations may be sensitive to such confusion. Therefore, governments should, in the interest of welfare and environ­ment, regulate what can and may be advertised as low-carbon or green."

"The reasons underlying the dominance of advertising over social norms were explored by performing an analysis of the mechanisms and decisions channels used by both stimuli to influence choice. Results show green advertising is able to influence choice even if participants do not recall the ad, suggesting an unconscious mechanism."