Laura Weiss

Self-Regulation Lab
Social, Health & Organisational Psychology
Utrecht University

Does saving the planet

make you happy?
Science of Happiness

• Venhoeven, L. A., Bolderdijk, J. W., &

Steg, L. (2013). Explaining the
paradox: How pro-environmental
behaviour can both thwart and foster
well-being. Sustainability, 5(4), 1372-
1386.

• Brosch, T. (2021). Affect and emotions

as drivers of climate change perception
and action: A review. Current Opinion

Literature in Behavioral Sciences, 42, 15-21.

 What you will learn today

• Why your climate goal should not be to cut your electricity use by half this winter, but to switch off
the light behind you every time you leave a room next week.
• Why having a warm glow will help to save the planet.
• Why community is important for your well-being after environmental disasters Guest
presentation by Tugba Altin (University of Calgary)

Kasser, 2018

What is pro-environmental behaviour?

• Many different definitions, variables and measures

1) Conservation of resources (e.g. conserving water)
2) Sustainable consumption (e.g. renting things instead of
buying)
3) Sustainable mobility (e.g. riding a bicycle instead of a
car)
4) Political environmentalism (e.g. joining a march, signing
petitions)
5) Altruistic environmental behaviours (e.g. picking up
litter)
(Venema et al., 2023)
6) Educational environmental behaviours (e.g. inform
Presentation title 5

Explaining the paradox: how pro-environmental

behaviour can both thwart and foster well-being

Venhoeven, L. A., Bolderdijk, J. W., & Steg, L. (2013). Explaining the paradox: How pro-environmental behaviour can both thwart and foster well-being. Sustainability, 5(4), 1372-1386.
 Two opposing views

• There are two opposing views on the link between pro-environmental behavior
and well-being:

1. Behaving in a pro-environmental way is often believed to decrease individual well-being, as it is

perceived as difficult, less comfortable, and potentially threatening one‘s quality of life.

2. Yet some studies find pro-environmental behavior to increase individual well-being.

Venhoeven et al., 2013

Contradicting findings

• Life satisfaction negatively related to collaborative pro-environmental

behaviour, but the relationship reversed when people feel highly connected
to nature (Ibáñez-Rueda et al., 2020)
• A decrease in consumption level is associated with a decline in
happiness (Fanning & O’Neill, 2018)

• Individual with higher subjective well-being reported more ecologically

responsible behaviour (Brown & Kasser, 2005)
• The more pro-ecological a person is, the more they experience happiness
 Well-being - consumption paradox

• Well-being and consumption levels are

positively correlated until a plateau point
where increasing consumption does not
significantly increase well-being (Fanning &
O’Neill, 2018).
• At low levels, increasing energy/emission is highly correlated
with a good lifestyle and subjective well-being.
• At high levels, returns steeply diminish. Once a need
(protective environment) is satisfied, no further gains are
possible.
• This implies a mitigation strategy that protects minimum
levels of consumption but is critical against excessive 9
consumption.

The Easterlin paradox: Can we consume less

without compromising our well-being?

Image source: Frey & Stutzer, 2002. What Can

Economists Learn from Happiness Research?
 Well-
A different view on well-being

Hedonic well-being
vs.
Eudaimonic well-being

being
Venhoeven et al., 2013

An argument for eudaimonia in climate

change mitigation
• A hedonic framework targets individual change – wealthy people should consume
less; poor people must cope better with and adapt to climate impacts
• A eudaimonic framework targets social change - behaviours originate from social
and political context: call for institutional change as a prerequisite of behavioural
change
• Most appropriate frameworks for mitigation research describe well-being as
• multidimensional
• satiable
• socially-based
Eudaimonic theory is thus better suited to inform climate change mitigation research
than hedonic approaches (Lamb & Steinberger, 2017)
Lamb, W. F., & Steinberger, J. K. (2017). Human well-being and climate change mitigation. WIREs Climate Change, 8, 8:e485
 • Pro-environmental behavior may decrease
Why your climate goal shouldhedonic
not be to well-being (i.e., feeling
cut your electricity pleasure),
use by half this winter, but
to as protecting the environment may be an
switch off the light behind you every time you
unattainable leaveleading
goal, a room next week.
to psychological
distress.
Goals and protecting
the environment • However, this is only the case if the goal
pursuit is perceived to be unattainable.
Reframing goals into smaller sub-goals can
get people motivated and derive hedonic
well-being from their actions.
Venhoeven et al., 2013

Is it pro-environmental behavior itself that impacts well-

being?
It is not pro-environmental behavior itself, but the ‘by-products’ that can
be pleasurable (enjoying your bicycle ride to work) or unpleasurable
(feeling cold due to turning down the thermostat).

Venhoeven et al., 2013

 Evidence that acting sustainably makes you
happy

• Meta-analysis (Zawadzki et al., 2020) with 78 studies found a consistent

significant, positive relation between people’s pro-environmental behaviors and
wellbeing
• Small-to-medium effect for hedonic happiness (r = .201) and medium effect for
eudaimonic happiness (r = .240)
• Relation was consistently positive but stronger
• for indicators of pro-environmental behavior that reflect meaning, e.g. sustainable purchase
decisions (r = .291)
• when people act consciously instead of automatically or out of habit

Zawadzki, S. J., Steg, L., & Bouman, T. (2020). Meta-analytic evidence for a robust and positive association between individuals’ pro-environmental behaviors and their
subjective wellbeing. Environmental Research Letters, 15(12), 123007.

Warm glow as possible explanation

• When you consciously choose a more sustainable option, your decision
feels meaningful and so it may be more likely to give you a warm glow

Warm glow: a pleasant feeling from the sense that you are doing the right
thing

• Over time, doing many of these types of behaviours might build a deeper
sense of personal meaning, which would improve longer-term happiness.
• Implications: sustainable behavior is not only costly and inconvenient but
also leads to positive outcomes for individuals: it can make people feel
good.
Zawadzki et al. (2020). 16
 When will sustainable behavior impact well-being?
People only will experience higher eudaimonic well-being if they
• are intrinsically, autonomously motivated and deliberately choose a pro-environmental
lifestyle
• think behaving pro-environmentally is the right thing to do

Venhoeven et al., 2013

Materialism – bad for other people and the

planet?

BAD FOR
OTHERS
•Materialism is
associated with
Kasser, 2018

attitudes and
Hurst, M., Dittmar, H., Bond, R., & Kasser, T. (2013). The relationship between materialistic values and environmental attitudes and behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Environmental
Psychology, 36, 257-269.
 Can we help people to act
more sustainably?
• When aiming to increase well-being, forcing people to act in a pro-
environmental way by making it obligatory by law is contra-productive
BUT
• Shifting one‘s focus from the pursuit of materialistic things to the pursuit of
non-materialistic things (e.g. personal growth and finding a sense of
meaning in life) is both pro-environmental and can contribute to
eudaimonic well-being
• Convince people that pro-environmental behaviour is right and meaningful.
• Give people the possibility to make their own choice to act sustainably.

Venhoeven et al., 2013

 Youth and climate change

• Younger generations will be most affected by

negative consequences of climate change
• They are interested in global problems, but feel
hopeless, pessimistic and helpless, and can
become inactive
• 27% of Australian 10-14 year-olds think that the world
may end during their life due to climate change (Tucci
et al., 2007)
• Two-thirds of young Germans think climate change
threatens human existence (but are optimistic about
own future (Albert et al., 2007)

Ojala, M. (2012). Hope and climate change: The importance of hope for environmental engagement among young people. Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 625-642.

22
 Climate
anxiety • Preoccupation with climate change that leads to intense
anxiety
• About a third of people very worried about climate change
• It can impair daily functioning and mental health (Clayton &
Karazsia, 2020)
• cognitive-emotional impairment (depression, anxiety )
Brosch, 2021 • functional impairment in day-to-day life (concentration,
sleeping)

Learning about

Learnin
global issues:
why most
educators only
• Education about global
make things
issues sometimes
worse
increases negative
feelings (Hicks & Bord,

about
2001)

Hicks, D., & Bord, A. (2001). Learning about global issues: why most educators only make • Strong cognitive, affective 24
things worse. Environmental Education Research, 7(4), 413-425.
and existential responses
 The role of emotions in climate change
mitigation

Brosch, T. (2021). Affect and emotions as drivers of climate change perception and action: A review. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 42,
15-21.
 Positive and negative emotions and affect play an
important role across a wide range of our responses
to climate change
Literature on these relations is mainly of correlational
nature: We don’t know if emotions are antecedents or
consequences of climate change judgements and
behaviors

Brosch, 2021

Framing the future

The future of eating and drinking

If we do not change our diet, affordable and tasty food will no longer be self-evident in 20 years. A very large part
of our income is then spent on food, and we have little choice in what we can put on the table. This is because
harvests fail more often due to floods or severe drought.
The extinction of beneficial insects has caused many birds and wildflowers to disappear, leaving us with fewer
fresh fruits and vegetables. Instead of fresh food, we increasingly turn to synthetic food with added vitamins. We
dilute these powders with bottled water, because clean tap water is no longer a given.
Only rich people can still eat fish occasionally. Most growing children have no idea what a herring tastes like. The
oceans have become deserts of water because fish species have been unable to recover due to overfishing.
Due to the drying up of the land, there is little room left for keeping livestock. There are too many of these
animals too close together, which means that large-scale animal diseases are commonplace.
 Negative climate change
messages:
a call to act?
• Negative emotions / affect towards climate change
predicts willingness to engage in climate change
mitigating and adaption behaviours
• Inducing guilt for human-caused damage to the
environment increased
• probability that participants would sign an environmental petition
• willingness to repair environmental damages
• Fear-appeals only work if you provide people with a
way to avoid the thing they are afraid of
• Yet people prefer climate messages without negative
emotional content
Brosch, 2021

Negative messages and their effect on emotions

• Listening to personal stories about how climate change is
harming individuals increases worry and compassion
• Inducing anger increases tendencies to punish others for
negative environmental actions
• Emotions need to be specifically related to climate
problematic to be effective
• Emotions such as sadness are transient – a time delay
between emotion induction and behavior can diminish
effect
• Solutions: placing a message close to the intended behavior or pre-
commitments
• Fear-based messages could drive people in a passive state
of helplessness, avoidance and denial, as the threat is seen
as too large to solve

Brosch, 2021
 Framing the future
The future of eating and drinking

If we change our diet, plant-based eating will become self-evident in

20 years. We have embraced world cuisine. Food with a high
environmental impact is taxed more. Consumers automatically make
more sustainable and healthier choices, and we eat a lot of fresh
seasonal fruit and vegetables.
We eat fish in moderation. More marine reserves have been created so
that endangered fish species can recover. Fish stocks are closely
monitored by a global marine ecology institute.

Can hope help to frame climate change

communication?

• Hope theory states that hope is the feeling that a goal is within reach, and consists of three components (Snyder, 2000):
1) Goals we want to happen
2) Pathway thinking: coming up with routes to get there
3) Agency thinking: motivation to use pathways
• Cognitive (ideas about the future) and emotional components
• High levels of hope help people to take in more information and use information more actively, helps with constructive problem-
solving and goal-directedness
• Hope is a strong motivation to act, even in the absence of certainties.
• Three hope themes (Ojala, 2012) that go beyond the individualistic focus of hope theory and include a collective dimension:
• Positive re-appraisal (‘I feel hope concerning climate change because the awareness about this problem has increased
considerably during recent years.’)
• Trust in one’s own ability to influence environmental problems (‘I have hope because we as individuals can change our
behaviour.’)
Ojala, M.•(2012).
Trust inand
Hope sources outside
climate change: The oneself
importance(‘I feelforhope
of hope concerning
environmental climate
engagement amongchange because
young people. politicians
Environmental in more
Education and
\research, more
18(5), countries take
625-642.
climate change seriously, and because I believe that technical solutions will contribute to the improvement of climate change
 Hope-based messages: an alternative?

• Constructive hope (trust that climate change is changeable by collective

action) was positively related to
• pro-environmental behaviour
• policy support and climate-related political participation
• political engagement
but optimistic messages about process in reducing carbon emissions reduced risk
perceptions
• False/denial-based hope (doubts about climate change, positive
consequences of climate change) negatively related to climate actions
• Hope and worry (Ojala, 2008):
• High climate worry: hope positively related to environmental engagement
• Low degree of worry: hope negatively related to environmental engagement (denial?)
• Effective hope-based messages
Brosch, 2021
• focused on solutions and efficacy

What to remember about hope

• Distinguish between hope based on denial of climate change and hope

based on constructive forms of coping with this threat.
• Positive emotions can facilitate engagement concerning climate change.
• Having trust in societal actors (politicians, scientists) is important for
feeling hopeful.
• Boost hope by identifying optimistic but realistic sub-goals concerning
own engagement, discussing pathways that are both individual and
collective and effective in reaching the sub-goals. Celebrate small
successes. Encourage feelings of agency with the message that
everyone’s effort is worth something.
Ojala, 2012
 Warm glow
Why having a warm glow will help to save the
planet.

• Warm glow: the positive emotional experience when acting pro-environmental

• concept originally linked to pro-social behavior
• The act of doing good results in a positive emotional experience that rewards and reinforces behavior
• Anticipated warm glow – expecting to feel good when acting sustainably – predicts pro-environmental
behavior at a later point
The virtuous cycle of positive affect

Pro-environmental Experienced positive

behavior affect

Anticipated positive
affect

Brosch, 2021

“
‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

”
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Emily Dickinson
 TIME FOR
Thank you QUESTIONS
l.a.weiss@uu.nl