Abstract
Carbon emissions associated with individual choices are difficult to conceptualize and seldom considered in daily decision making. We examine the impact of personalized feedback on carbon emissions on intended climate action. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 790), participants reported their consumption in 2019 and received personalized feedback on carbon emissions and recommendations for reduction in the feedback condition, or no feedback in the control condition. Subsequently, all participants indicated their consumption intentions in 2023, which was one year from the year the experiment was conducted. After receiving feedback, participants showed a significant emission reduction of 1.42tCO2e (− 12.60%) per capita between 2019 and 2023, whereas those in the control condition increased their emissions by 0.05tCO2e (+ 0.045%). Importantly, there was no impact on intentions to engage in civic climate action. Civic climate intentions were instead associated with eco-guilt and climate concerns. These findings suggest personalized feedback has the potential to reduce carbon emissions without impacting civic climate intentions, providing implications for strategies to encourage climate action.
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Data availability
The dataset and the R code are available on OSF: https://osf.io/p5xvc/?view_only=5601a73fae4349fe958b491b44b5f8bf.
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This work was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program (to JZ and HD) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship (to YL).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation were performed by YL and BW. Data collection were performed by YL and analysis were performed by BW. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BW and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Luo, Y., Hanson-Wright, B., Dowlatabadi, H. et al. How does personalized feedback on carbon emissions impact intended climate action?. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-04031-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-04031-0