The Critical Challenge of Climate Change for Psychology

Offsetting Increasingly Efficient Technologies

Because of its efficiency improvements, a most impressive example of rebound has been produced by information and communications technology (ICT). For several decades now, processors have doubled their efficiency every 18 months (Koomey, Berard, Sanchez, & Wong, 2011). If efficiency were to reduce energy consumption, one would expect rather dramatic energy savings. However, by contrast, energy consumption with efficiency improvements in ICT has increased and is expected to grow at an annual rate of up to 12% (Vereecken, Van Heddeghem, Colle, Pickavet, & Demeester, 2010). Obviously, efficiency gains have created further uses for ICT, and they have also resulted in – due to efficiency-related price reductions – more people using ICT; together, these increases have in turn obstructed actual energy conservation.

A similar instance of rebound that has drawn further unanticipated consumption – through the expanded use of products or services intended to reduce the consumption of energy after the adoption of more efficient products or services – can also be found at the level of individual households. Conservative estimates of this so-called direct rebound in the individual consumption of households range from 0% to 60% with an average of about 30% (e.g., Sorrell, Dimitropoulos, & Sommerville, 2009). Because estimates of direct rebound are usually based on usage data, they often appear to be lower than 100%. However, efficiency can also spark demands for goods, services, and, ultimately, for energy in multiple rather indirect ways as well (cf. Hertwich, 2005). Financial gains through more efficient house insulation can, for instance, be reinvested in extra holiday trips (Herring & Roy, 2007). Most of these indirect rebound effects are even more difficult to estimate than the direct effects, particularly for individuals. Breaking energy expenditure down to the level of the individual thus seems to provide a straightforward approach for appraising the overall amount of rebound from all of the technological and political steps taken by a society to reduce its energy consumption. Based on such per-capita consumption data from various societies, the evidence from the World Bank data suggests a society-wide rebound of at least 100% (see Figure 1).

To approximate the consequences of adopting more energy-efficient technology and implementing specific ecological behavior (e.g., switching from owning a car to car sharing), Alfredsson (2004) presented several scenarios – distinct in their overall levels of energy consumption – to 1,104 Swedish households. He concluded from the responses that, in the short term, some reduction in energy consumption might be possible. Unfortunately, he further anticipated that these gains would eventually be compensated for by a general consumption increase, which basically leads to the same bleak conclusion that we drew from Figure 1. Efficiency measures are ineffective in reducing the per-capita energy consumption of societies because they promote consumption by simultaneously freeing up the two resources of time and money. In the next section, we will provide an account of the apparently inevitable rebound phenomenon that comes with more efficient technology.

Drivers of Individual Energy Consumption

To identify the drivers of people’s energy consumption, we have to answer the question of why people use technology. We thus have to understand people’s generic motivation. Traditionally, in psychology, a rational-choice logic is adopted in which the anticipation of benefits makes a person choose a certain behavior. By this logic, people are thought of as – in the form of behavioral inclinations (see footnote 1) – being goal-directed and benefit-oriented, and hence, they aim to achieve personal ends and act for personal benefits (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 2005; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Hsee, Hastie, & Chen, 2008). More precisely, when a person engages in a behavior (e.g., doing chores, going to work, improving thermal comfort, or having an unforgettable evening), a surplus in benefits for the actor is presumed; otherwise, a behavioral alternative would occur. Accordingly, behavior change results from the opportunity to gain additional benefits.

As behavior can be ameliorated by technology, the preference for using a particular technology is correspondingly grounded in the same rationality. Take, for instance, lifting weights: Compare the meager 100 kilograms a strong man can lift with the 1,000 metric tons the same guy can hoist with a crane – an efficiency gain of 10,000. The ubiquitous presence of technological devices speaks not only of their generic utility for people but also of the idea that technologically ameliorated behaviors are commonly of superior utility when compared with plain behavior. Thus, and in line with Midden, Kaiser, and McCalley (2007), we see technology as able to amplify the effectiveness of behavior. For instance, commuting by car as opposed to walking to work can be a way to increase convenience (e.g., by providing a few more minutes of sleep, shelter from the weather, or safety). As each person individually recognizes a technology’s characteristics, he or she also individually appreciates the costs and benefits that are derived from these characteristics. For people who prefer cars, velocity and convenience obviously outweigh its financial costs. Hence, the choice of a particular technology is presumably motivated by as many reasons as there are people.

Motivation, however, resides in our biological makeup (see Bischof, 1985). Thus, we should also recognize behavior as being more or less biologically functional (e.g., Dawkins, 1976). Figuratively speaking, as any behavior unavoidably carries costs, the struggle for survival and reproduction induces an individual to act in a cost-sensitive manner (see, e.g., Jackson, 2002). Any reduction in behavioral costs associated with attaining a specific goal (e.g., finding food) leads to a relative advantage through the personal resources that are saved (e.g., time or physical energy) and that are left available to tackle other not-yet-attained behavioral objectives (e.g., finding a mate). The failure to use technology that either reduces behavioral costs or increases personal returns (e.g., by increasing convenience) would be irrational from this point of view.

Reducing behavioral costs and increasing behavioral efficacy are processes that have brought forward an extreme variety of morphological features and behavioral strategies in plants and animals; this is obviously the essence of evolution. A woodpecker’s beak, for instance, makes picking insects and grubs from trees highly effective and, thus, is comparatively more efficient than the beaks of other birds for those purposes. The same biological functionality predictably underlies human behavior as well. If we, as human beings, can attain our goals more efficiently (e.g., getting to work more quickly and conveniently), we will probably do so. Given its biological functionality, it would be surprising if there was no human propensity to seek behavioral efficiency and, as a consequence, to substitute less efficient behaviors with more efficient ones.³ Note that increasing behavioral efficiency is basically identical to reducing behavioral costs.

In summary, from a motivational perspective, people use technology because technology is useful for meeting personal ends. Technology amplifies the effectiveness of behavior, and by doing so, it improves a behavior’s benefits. From an evolutionary perspective, technology – as is true for all efficiency gains in behavior – increases the benefits of human behavior by reducing behavioral costs. Motivationally, we should anticipate that humans have a propensity to generally opt for more efficient behavioral options that involve reduced behavioral costs. As technology is an extremely powerful means for simultaneously ameliorating effectiveness and efficiency, we expect that people will – ceteris paribus – be generically inclined to adopt more efficient technology because it increases the benefits of whatever people do to attain their goals. As we will see next, due to a virtually endless number of individual ends that are constantly ready to accommodate extra time and money, increasingly efficient technology inevitably results in rebound in the energy consumption of individuals.

Time and Money Constraints on Consumption

As increasing efficiency implies that technology fulfills its function more quickly and/or at a smaller price, increasing efficiency necessarily involves freeing two of the most crucial resources required to realize any personal goal: time and money. Both time (by its 24 hr rhythm) and money (as even a billionaire is limited to his or her particular amount of money) are genuinely constrained for all of us. If a person wishes to realize not-yet-attained or new personal goals, extra time and money are, thus, essential. By improving the efficiency of technology, individual time and money constraints are concomitantly lifted as well. Predictably, such savings in terms of time and money are normally reinvested into not-yet-attained personal goals. Hence, savings of time and money will eventually lead to more energy consumption.

Illumination, for example, has a long and most impressive history of improving efficiency. In comparison to candles, oil lamps, and gaslights, modern light bulbs are 700 times more efficient (Fouquet & Pearson, 2006). At the same time, people spend a fixed proportion of money for illumination irrespective of historical period or cultural tradition (e.g., Tsao & Waide, 2010). By contrast, the per-capita consumption of lumen-hours is now 6,500 times of what it once was (Herring & Roy, 2007). People have obviously had and will presumably continue to have additional uses for light, which spurs consumption as soon as light becomes cheaper (e.g., illuminating more rooms, leaving lights on, extending street lighting), which in turn depends on more efficient illumination technology. Obviously, efficiency gains in terms of energy – and, hence, in terms of time and money – may be saved because energy consumption is constrained by time and money. These gains in efficiency will probably not be saved in the long run, however, because people are greatly intrinsically motivated to avoid using energy (Midden et al., 2007). Without such an inclination to save energy, we have to expect that there will constantly be another not-yet-attained further personal goal that will take advantage of the savings in terms of time and money and, thus, that increasingly efficient technology will inevitably create rebound in the energy consumption of individuals.

In the next section, we will turn to contemporary approaches for managing actors. As we will see, environmental psychologists primarily rely on interventions that are aimed at rational human beings who are generically inclined to optimize their benefits. Based on incentives, psychologists design enticements that allow for the reduction of undesirable behavior, such as commuting by car. By disregarding the motivational consequences of enticements, psychologists run the considerable risk that their interventions, even with the best of their intentions, will only add to rebound rather than contribute to an effective reduction in the overall consumption of energy.

Managing Through Enticements

Whereas direct payment to promote behavior is rare in environmental psychology, monetary enticements are omnipresent in commerce (i.e., providing free access to products or services) and in administration (i.e., subsidizing solar panels or providing a refund for beverage cans). Despite its undeniable effectiveness, monetary enticements come with several shortcomings: They are expensive, must be protected against exploitation, and seem to carry the potential of undermining – due to overjustification – an already existing intrinsic propensity to protect the environment and to save energy to name a few (e.g., De Young, 2000; Lehman & Geller, 2004). Not surprisingly, alternative enticements to advance specific behaviors have become more popular in environmental psychology.

As it turns out, ecological behavior can also be promoted by benefits that are grounded in people’s social motives (e.g., Joule, Girandola, & Bernard, 2007). Such social enticements involve the prospect of public praise, gains in reputation and status, and avoidance of repercussions. By complying with a particular social norm, people can either avoid behavioral costs (i.e., repercussions and embarrassment) or hope for additional personal benefits (i.e., praise and prestige). By providing feedback on what others do (descriptive norms) and on what is seen as the proper behavior (injunctive norms), Schultz and his colleagues successfully increased the household recycling rate and the reuse of towels by hotel guests (Schultz, 1999; Schultz, Khazian, & Zaleski, 2008). People can also be bound to certain courses of action (saving electrical energy, reducing mileage, etc.) by making promises in public (e.g., Joule et al., 2007). Apparently, a publicly signed contract binds people to honor the contract as they seem to wish to avoid the bad social reputation that comes with hypocrisy – the practice of committing oneself to a course of action without actually implementing it (e.g., Dickerson, Thibodeau, Aronson, & Miller, 1992).

Almost counterintuitively, people have also been found to draw personal benefits from wasting money. This can happen when a person engages in a socially approved (e.g., ecological) but challenging (e.g., due to financial costs) behavior. By foregoing personal benefits (i.e., spending extra money) for the ecological alternative (e.g., a hybrid car), people simultaneously express both affluence or social standing and concern for the environment and, thus, selflessness and altruism (Griskevicius, Tybur, & van den Bergh, 2010). If there were no extra personal benefits involved, conspicuous ecological consumption (i.e., simultaneously showcasing affluence and selflessness) would be irrational as it involves extra financial costs. But high social status can pay off by helping a person to procure higher wages, more advantageous deals and contracts, or access to certain social circles (see Griskevicius et al., 2010). Conspicuous ecological consumption, however, allows a person to gain prestige and social status only when the behavior and its ecological and monetary significance are noticed by others.

The Limits of Managing Through Enticements

Managing individual action with enticements comes with a big shortcoming: People engage in the act for extrinsic reasons (i.e., because they wish to obtain the incentive) rather than because the behavior is a means for attaining an intrinsic personal energy-saving goal or a personal environmental protection goal (e.g., Geller, 2002). By controlling actions via enticements, we merely counterbalance the personal benefits of specific undesirable behaviors. Accordingly, the behavioral promotion works only as long as the enticement remains in place (e.g., Bolderdijk, Knockaert, Steg, & Verhoef, 2011; Thøgersen & Møller, 2008; see also Abrahamse, Steg, Vlek, & Rothengatter, 2005). Thus, financial incentives, social expectations, or gains in social reputation are not real options when we wish to create lasting change in individuals and societies, and when we truly aim to conserve energy and, ultimately, to protect the environment. Even worse, by loosening the constraints on time and money, extrinsic reasons for saving energy backfire because they spark further consumption.

Carpool lanes to bypass traffic jams and the use of high-speed trains save travel time. Subsidies, rebates, merchandise coupons, and technological renewal (e.g., insulating homes) save money. And because individuals are not more intrinsically motivated to save energy, to engage in protecting the environment, and to waive personal resources, the extra time and extra money will likely be reinvested in the additional consumption of goods and services as a virtually endless number of personal ends are ready to take over. Expectedly, Fujii and Ohta (2010) found that the financial savings in fuel gained by owners of fuel-efficient cars backfired in the form of increased driving. Although such a direct rebound is rarely documented in psychology, indirect rebound via more consumption – due to an unaltered intrinsic motivation and an increase in leisure time or extra money – should be expected. In summary, the environmental psychology strategy that is often recommended as most effective at reducing the energy consumption of societies – the promotion of energy-efficient technology (e.g., Gardner & Stern, 2008; Oskamp, 2000; Stern, 2000a) – in combination with extrinsic enticements will probably spark rather than diminish the overall energy consumption of individuals.

As a consequence, we argue in this article that only when people are genuinely more intrinsically motivated to forgo commodities, convenience, and personal advantages for the collective good (i.e., environmental protection) can rebound be avoided; only then will people save energy for good. Thus, promoting the propensity to waive personal benefits, to generally act irrationally (by engaging in behavior that holds comparatively – relative to an alternative behavior – more costs or fewer benefits) and by doing so to eventually reduce the overall energy consumption of a society is the real challenge for psychology. Next, we will describe what we mean by an irrational lifestyle, and we will ask the question: Can an irrational lifestyle be promoted so that efficiency gains are not eaten up as rebound?

Propensity for Waiving Personal Benefits

People’s lifestyles, including their consumption patterns, are mainly driven by personal benefit-oriented and, thus, genuinely rational considerations (e.g., Kenrick et al., 2009). These patterns by and large lead to environmental deterioration and resource depletion. According to Hardin (1968), environmental deterioration stems from people’s self-interested quests to secure all sorts of benefits, simultaneously undermining the energy and environmental conservation that are needed for the greater good of all. Thus, to a large degree, environmentalism can be equated with people’s propensity to waive personal advantages and to forgo personal amenities and commodities.

If a person was not dedicated to environmental protection, why would that person abstain from comfort, for example, commuting by bike in inclement weather or accepting less thermal comfort at home, giving money that could be spent otherwise to environmental organizations, and forfeiting amenities such as clothes dryers, cars, and extra lamps? Conversely, when the slightest inconvenience, discomfort, or extra expenditure in energy-efficient appliances is enough to stop a person from taking behavioral steps to save energy, the person’s intrinsic motivation to protect the environment is probably weak.

Environmentalists forgo all sorts of personal advantages: They drive and fly less, are more likely vegetarians and members of environmental organizations, possess fuel-efficient cars, and contribute financially to environmental organizations (e.g., Kaiser & Wilson, 2004). In other words, a person’s intrinsic motivation to protect the environment can be inferred directly from his or her lifestyle⁶ – the behavioral means a person engages in to implement his or her level of motivation to protect the environment. The extent of that motivation in turn can be depicted as the likelihood of engaging in the entire range of protection-relevant ecological behaviors (cf. Kaiser, Byrka, & Hartig, 2010).

Remarkably however, environmentalists – persons who are intrinsically motivated to protect the environment – have been found to waive personal advantages not only in the form of amenities but in general with respect to all kinds of prosocial outcomes. For example, environmentalists relative to the general public are more benevolent, helpful, and cooperative (Kaiser & Byrka, 2011); this shows in the fact that environmentalists are more likely to volunteer for psychological experiments and to generally cooperate more with others in social dilemma games (the main effect in Figure 2 ). Additionally, environmentalists also forgo personal amenities (the interaction effect in Figure 2) by demanding significantly less power (see arrow in Figure 2) than what they were socially entitled to (indicated by the “line of social justice”). Not only has this effect been found in an aggregated form, averaged across the 10 rounds of the social dilemma game, but also, Kaiser et al. (2010) found that environmentalists forfeited personal entitlements from the start – from the first round of the game – if they were playing for power rather than for mere points. Waiving personal advantages – in this case, demanding less power than rightfully allowed – is irrational and understandable only when we know that we are dealing with environmentalists (cf. Hardin, 1968).

Social dilemmas are situations in which people’s long-term best interests are at odds with their personal benefit orientation (e.g., Kollock, 1998); these dilemmas normally involve two unfavorable outcomes: the destruction of the commons (in this case the environment) and the forfeiting of personal benefits. One can reasonably expect repudiation of the benefit orientation when environmentalists are involved, when forfeiting personal advantages is the lesser of the two concerns. Accordingly, Kaiser and Byrka (2011) corroborated that environmentalism represents a propensity to waive personal advantages (i.e., amenities, conveniences, and other commodities), to engage in a comparatively frugal lifestyle, which is also how we understand the cartoon in Figure 3 . As forfeiting advantages is – from a functional point of view (see Footnote 2) – irrational; thus, the question arises: Is there a good reason for environmentalists to do so?

Personal Gains From Being Irrational

In many cultures, natural environments provide the backdrop for recreation, entertainment, and an escape from daily demands. Thus, appreciation for and the recreational use of nature has been found to be a motivational source for environmental conservation (e.g., Hartig, Kaiser, & Bowler, 2001; Kellert, 2002). When recreational use is absent, by contrast, some suspect that environmental destruction will result (see, e.g., Kellert, 2002). By the same logic, environmental organizations have long sought to build support for environmental protection efforts by drawing people into pristine natural environments. Apparently, a personal appreciation of nature is expected to arise from using nature for recreational, restorative, and other purposes related to various personally pleasurable and gratifying experiences in nature (for some tentative evidence, see Roczen, Duvier, Bogner, & Kaiser, 2012).

In environmental psychology, the generic phenomenon of using nature, seeing personal benefits in using nature, and appreciating nature is echoed in various, apparently distinct conceptualizations. Whereas some presume that people hold an emotional connection with nature (Mayer & Frantz, 2004), others speak of the role the natural environment plays in a person’s identity or self-concept (e.g., Clayton, 2003). Still others describe differences in appreciation as reflected in a mixture of both affective and cognitive constituents (e.g., Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy, 2009). By shifting the emphasis to plain appreciation and recreational uses of nature, Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen (2011) essentially captured the same propensity that other scholars have sought to measure with different concepts. Nevertheless, and in line with laypersons’ expectations, the extent to which nature is appreciated has been repeatedly found to be positively and substantially (r ≥ .50) related to ecological behavior and, thus, to acting comparatively irrationally (e.g., Clayton, 2003; Hinds & Sparks, 2008; Kaiser, Hartig, Brügger, & Duvier, 2013; Mayer & Frantz, 2004).

Such a substantial correlation suggests that people are, to some extent, willing to forgo personal advantages in exchange for the benefits they gain from nature. At first, this appears to be a rational trade-off. Securing access to the natural environment to secure the benefits that come from using nature, however, is not rational at all. This is because the immediate personal benefit from, for example, financially contributing to an environmental organization is close to zero, as the donation will draw a financial loss, and will probably result in no benefit to the benefactor’s own natural surroundings. In other words, the consequences of ecological behavior for nature are generally too remote – in time or in space – to contribute to the benefactor’s personal advantage. In the last section, we turn to preventing rebound by promoting lifestyles that seem, by comparison, irrational because they involve forgoing commodities and other personal advantages by not redeeming the savings of money and time gleaned from energy-efficient technologies.

Irrationality to Prevent Rebound

In line with Hardin (1968), a democratic society could, of course, coerce its citizens into less consumption by restricting the per-capita amount of energy that is made available to the society at large. The potential problem with this approach is, to use Hardin’s words, to obtain mutual agreement about the compulsory measure by “the majority of the people affected” (p. 1,248). If compulsory measures are unlikely to be implemented, however, trend reversal becomes possible only if citizens can be convinced to consent to a society-wide policy that involves amending their lifestyles so that they become more irrational: for example, by accepting higher prices for energy so that consumption becomes more expensive and, thus, is less likely to occur. In other words, the best we can hope for is to gain democratic approval for forming a “self-directed” (i.e., intrinsically motivated) waiving of personal advantages.

We already know that the intrinsic motivation to protect the environment and, thus, to waive personal benefits is remarkably stable over time. Across a period of 2 years, Kaiser, Brügger, Hartig, Bogner, and Gutscher (2013) found almost no spontaneous change in individuals’ intrinsic motivation to protect the environment. This absence of spontaneous change makes it clear that we are in need of knowledge about how to promote irrationality in individuals. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the formation of intrinsic motivation to protect the environment and to implement somewhat irrational lifestyles. For example, we are unaware of any study in psychology thus far that has been able to experimentally advance people’s intrinsic motivation to protect the environment.

We suspect that amending lifestyles and, thus, consumption patterns, presumably implies the need for a long-term strategy in which a prominent role is played by people’s appreciation and recreational uses of nature, and information provision (e.g., in the form of consumption feedback and/or education). Despite some encouraging first model tests (see, e.g., Roczen, Kaiser, Bogner, & Wilson, in press), we still have a long way to go before we can and should sensibly engage in large-scale reformations of people’s propensity to generally act more irrationally.