How pride and guilt guide pro-environmental behaviour

The world is currently confronted with environmental problems such as water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and air pollution. A promising way to reduce environmental problems is to encourage consumers towards more sustainable consumption patterns. Pro-environmental consumer choices involve a tradeoff between environmental motives and more personally related motives such as healthiness, convenience, and price. In this dissertation we explore how feeling good about oneself influences pro-environmental decision making. We focus on pride and guilt, which belong to the group of self-conscious emotions. Self-conscious emotions occur when individuals are aware of themselves and reflect on themselves in order to evaluate whether their behaviour is in accordance with their (personal and social) standards. In short, we explore the fundamental way in which pride and guilt guide pro-environmental behaviour via self-reflection. We propose that pride and guilt guide behaviour via a self-regulatory function, meaning that they provide feedback about how one is performing regarding one’s own standards and the perceived standards of others. The emotional feedback is used to guide oneself in accordance with these standards (i.e. self-regulation). Furthermore, we propose that the way one sees the self (who am I in relation to others), affects how individuals evaluate themselves, which in turn affects how pride and guilt are formed and guide behaviour. This thesis has both theoretical implications, as we increase understanding in the function of self-conscious emotions, and practical implications, as understanding the functions of pride and guilt in consumer decision making can be used to develop interventions to promote pro-environmental behaviour among consumers. For a thorough discussion of these implications we refer to the General Discussion. Below we provide a short overview of the findings of the individual chapters. Chapter 2 explores whether and how pride and guilt affect pro