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Simple and Smart: Investigating Two Heuristics That Guide the Intention to Engage in Different Climate-Change-Mitigation Behaviors

Author

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  • Ellen Matthies

    (Department of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Postfach 4120, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany)

  • Theresa de Paula Sieverding

    (Department of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Postfach 4120, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany)

  • Lukas Engel

    (Department of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Postfach 4120, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany)

  • Anke Blöbaum

    (Department of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Postfach 4120, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany)

Abstract

Individuals can support climate-change mitigation in many ways, e.g., through private-sphere behaviors or the support of political measures. We assume that the common climate-change-mitigation heuristic of restriction does not sufficiently support impactful mitigation intentions and therefore introduce and investigate a new heuristic (optimization heuristic.) In a cross-sectional survey with N = 1427 participants (representative of the German population with regard to age, gender, education), we developed two scales to measure the heuristics of restriction and optimization. As individual climate-change-mitigation intentions, we recorded four types of private-sphere behavior, activism, and three forms of policy support. Further psychological variables (personal norm, biospheric value orientation) and sociodemographic variables were recorded. The factorial structure of all concepts was assessed by means of confirmatory factor analyses. Hierarchical regression analyses with the climate-change-mitigation intentions as the criterion were carried out. Results support the assumption of two related, yet distinct, climate-change-mitigation heuristics that were highly correlated with biospheric value orientation. We additionally computed measure of the dominance of the restriction heuristic. This variable had no correlation with biospheric values, and correlated with the intentions in the expected ways, indicating that individuals with a dominant restriction heuristic tend to show lower scores of impactful climate-change-mitigation intentions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ellen Matthies & Theresa de Paula Sieverding & Lukas Engel & Anke Blöbaum, 2023. "Simple and Smart: Investigating Two Heuristics That Guide the Intention to Engage in Different Climate-Change-Mitigation Behaviors," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-27, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:9:p:7156-:d:1132279
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    Cited by:

    1. Theresa de Paula Sieverding & Vanessa Kulcar & Karolin Schmidt, 2024. "Act like There Is a Tomorrow—Contact and Affinity with Younger People and Legacy Motivation as Predictors of Climate Protection among Older People," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(4), pages 1-26, February.
    2. Bloebaum, Anke & Schmidt, Karolin & Böcher, Michael & Arlinghaus, Julia & Krause, Friederike & Matthies, Ellen, 2024. "Overcoming heuristics that hinder people’s acceptance of climate-change-mitigation technologies," OSF Preprints dqt4u, Center for Open Science.

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