Nudging intrinsic motivation in environmental risk and social policy

Public and private institutions implement behavioral insights into policies to manage risks associated with environmental and social challenges. However, many such policies rely on providing external incentives, which inhibits sustained behavior change. We propose that message framing can be used to leverage intrinsic motivation toward pro-environmental and pro-social behaviors. Designing messages to raise feelings of autonomous choice has been shown to catalyze intrinsic engagement in promoted activities. We carried out a six-week randomized controlled trial (N = 128) to compare effects between autonomy-supportive messages and messages that contained social norms. Outcomes focused on engagement in sustainable behaviors, such as limiting electricity consumption and opting for locally produced goods. There were no significant differences in intrinsic motivation, participation in sustainable behaviors, or well-being for those frames, yet we observed moderate-to-strong relationships between these variables. While this indicates the specific intervention was not effective at inducing change, it is clear that effective risk policies should leverage intrinsic motivation to act sustainably. Harnessing the power of intrinsic motives will have a great chance at inducing lasting social change as well as improving well-being.