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In the current study, we aim to pilot and validate Arnocky et al.’s (2014) approach to the manipulation of future time perspectives in the Czech context. The secondary goal of this study is to estimate the effect of time perspectives on pro-environmental intention.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-eab-10.1177_00139165231163547 for Pro-Environmental Behavior Triggers Moral Inference, Not Licensing by Observers by Jan Urban, Štěpán Bahník and Markéta Braun Kohlová in Environment and Behavior

In the current study, we aim to pilot and validate Arnocky et al.’s (2014) approach to the manipulation of future time perspectives in the Czech context. The secondary goal of this study is to estimate the effect of time perspectives on pro-environmental intention.

This study will aim to replicate finding from Study 2 from Bastian et al. (2012) that motivated-cognition processes make people rate the mental capacities of animals (lambs and cows) as comparatively lower when they learn that these animals are bred for human consumption and will be slaughtered. Besides directly replicating Study 2 from Bastian et al., 2012, we also aim to extend this study by testing whether the effect of motivated cognition is moderated by meat-eating; we expect that motivated-cognition effect should be stronger in persons who eat meat. References Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t Mind Meat? The Denial of Mind to Animals Used for Human Consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(2), 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211424291

This study is a follow-up study to a preregistered study that can be found here: https://osf.io/79n3p/?view_only=9c22d64bbc7f4ae38ba2b9d1306130b8. In the present study, we want to answer the following two main research questions: (1) Does the provision of dynamic norm information (i.e., decreasing consumption of meat-based meals in the general population; for similar manipulation, see, e.g., Sparkman & Walton, 2019) have a positive effect on the intention to consume meatless food? (2) Does the provision of such dynamic norm information trigger a self-defense mechanism (countering cognitive dissonance due to discrepancy associated with the meat paradox; for details see Bastian & Loughnan, 2017) specifically through (a) a denial of responsibility for meat consumption; (b) a denial of harm due to meat consumption, and (c) protection of self-identity by judging personal characteristics of vegetarians harshly? References: Bastian, B., & Loughnan, S. (2017). Resolving the Meat-Paradox: A Motivational Account of Morally Troublesome Behavior and Its Maintenance. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(3), 278–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868316647562 Sparkman, G., & Walton, G. M. (2019). Witnessing change: Dynamic norms help resolve diverse barriers to personal change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 238–252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.01.007

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the 2020 lockdown related to COVID-19 affected the environmental motivation of individuals and the role this motivation plays in everyday decision-making and in the choice of delivery options for products bought over the Internet. We are interested in whether the lockdown reduced the frequency of proenvironmental behaviors and whether it decreased the probability of choosing environmentally friendly delivery options. In addition, we explore whether some of the following explanations can account for the expected drop in the frequency of proenvironmental behaviors and drop in probability choice of environmentally friendly delivery option: 1. higher behavioral costs of ecological behavior; 2. lower levels of environmental attitude; 3. lower weight of environmental attitude as a factor of environmental behavior. These three explanations are not mutually exclusive but have different implications. Explanation 1 (higher behavioral costs of environmental behavior) can be expected during the lockdown situation because many everyday activities become more difficult. As a result of higher behavioral costs, ecological behaviors become less frequent, even though environmental attitude levels of individuals remain unchanged (for theoretical argument, see, e.g., Kaiser et al., 2010; Kaiser & Wilson, 2004). If this explanation holds, we should expect individuals to make the same choices with respect to ecological behaviors as they did before the lockdown once they face similar behavioral costs as before the lockdown. Explanation 2 (lower environmental attitude levels) can be expected based on the notion that COVID-19 crisis might have led people to rethink their priorities and downgrade their behavioral goal of environmental conservation. If people downgraded the goal of environmental protection as their personal goal, they would be less likely to make environmentally friendly choices even when facing the same behavioral costs as before the COVID-19 lockdown (for theoretical argument, see, e.g., Kaiser et al., 2010; Kaiser & Wilson, 2004). Importantly, this explanation assumes that only the average attitude level in certain population drops but the weight of environmental attitude in the decision-making should remain the same as before the lockdown. Finally, explanation 3 (lower weight of environmental attitude) can be expected based on previous findings that heightened external constraints can attenuate the effect of environmental attitude on environmental behavior (e.g., Black, Stern, & Elworth, 1985; Diekmann & Preisendörfer, 2003). More specifically, we are interested in whether the COVID-19 lockdown attenuates the effect of environmental attitude on decision-making in otherwise similar decision situation as before the lockdown. Such attenuation can be driven, for instance, by various risk-compensation mechanisms whereby focus on minimization of one risk (e.g., COVID-related risks) leads to negligence of other risks (e.g., risks of ecological degradation; for related evidence, see Bolton et al., 2006; Dilley et al., 1997; Peltzman, 1975), or by other compensation mechanisms, such as moral licensing (e.g., Mullen & Monin, 2016) or single-action bias (e.g., Weber, 1997), whereby a focus on one set of socially desirable actions (e.g., protective behaviors against COVID-19) can perhaps lead to a neglect of other socially desirable actions (e.g., environmental protection). This explanation would mean that the weight of environmental attitude in decision-making would drop and, as a result of that, probability of specific environmental behavior would drop as well even if the average levels of environmental attitude in the population and behavioral costs of that behavior remain the same as before the lockdown.

The purpose of this study is to replicate and extend the results of the previous study (https://osf.io/tn28x/?view_only=3b307759e1be4979b567aae9f5747717) that focused on whether COVID-19-related restrictions affected people’s environmental motivation and their pro-environmental behavior. More specifically, the purpose of the current study is to replicate the following findings of the original study: (i) COVID-related restrictions did not have a uniform effect on engagement in pro-environmental behaviors; (ii) COVID-related restrictions did not have a uniform effect on behavioral costs of pro-environmental behaviors; (iii) COVID-related restrictions increased perceived behavioral costs of online shopping (delivery time, availability of products, overall difficulty of making the purchase). (iv) COVID-related restrictions did not change preference for environmentally friendly delivery of goods bought online; (v) COVID-related restrictions decreased the weight of environmental attitude as a factor of choice of environmentally friendly delivery options; (vi) COVID-related restrictions increased the weight of delivery time as a factor of choice of delivery options; (vii) COVID-related restrictions did not affect the weight of delivery price as a factor of choice of delivery options. Prior to the current study, we conducted another study using data collected before COVID-related restrictions were introduced (Sample 1, February 19-March 6, 2020) and after they were introduced (Sample 2, April 10-May 11, 2020, respectively); all participants of S2 were in s1, but identifiers of individuals that would link data from S1 and S2 were not available (datasets and materials available here: https://osf.io/tn28x/?view_only=3b307759e1be4979b567aae9f5747717). The current study uses data collected at the time when COVID restrictions were relaxed (Sample 3, September 2-October 3, 2020) and then re-introduced (Sample 4, November 20-December 30, 2020); same participants took place in S3 and S4 and the datasets are linked using identifiers of individual participants.

The goal of this study is to explore the relationship between nature-relatedness (Nisbet et al. 2013) and the feeling of comfort in complex natural environments.

Supplemental material, Appendix for No Evidence of Within-Domain Moral Licensing in the Environmental Domain by Jan Urban, Markéta Braun Braun Kohlová and Štěpán Bahník in Environment and Behavior

Recent studies (e.g., Griskevicius, Tybur, and Van den Bergh, 2010) have suggested that green consumption, similar to other instances of altruistic behaviour, may be used as a signal of elevated social status. The purpose of this study was to test this hypothesis using a series of three web-based experiments (total N = 1,223). We manipulated the green profile and costs of grocery products bought by a hypothetical consumer. Participants then evaluated the consumer's social status using direct and indirect measures of social status. Our results showed that green consumption was perceived by external observers both as a signal of altruism and elevated social status. Interestingly, we found that even though the price of products had a positive effect on the perceived social status of a consumer, it did not interact with the green profile of consumption as would be expected by the theory of costly signalling of altruism. Green consumption thus seems to be a very strong signal of elevated social status, quite independent of the explicit costs associated with such consumption.

A recent study (Mazar & Zhong, 2010) argued that green consumption may serve as a moral license and thus lead to subsequent dishonest behavior. In our three replications of the study (total N = 1,274), two of which were preregistered, participants’ level of green consumption was manipulated by having them purchase goods in either a green or conventional store. Three different tasks which allowed participants to cheat for monetary profit were used to measure dishonesty across the experiments. We found no effect of green consumption on subsequent honesty. These results cast doubt on the size of the effect found in the original study and suggest that green consumption is unlikely to trigger a cross-domain moral licensing effect.