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The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability
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The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 17733

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Patrik Sörqvist

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, University of Gävle, Gävle SE-801 76, Sweden
Interests: psychology; cognition; perception; judgment; thinking and reasoning; problem solving; decision making; environment; sustainability; climate change; energy systems
Dr. Alan Kabanshi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Building Engineering, Energy Systems and Sustainability Science, University of Gävle, SE-801 76 Gävle, Sweden
Interests: indoor environmental quality (IEQ); integration of solar energy in buildings; integration of photovoltaic and electric vehicles in electricity grids; human behavior and rebounds in sustainable built environments
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Many environmental issues are rooted in systematic biases in human cognition and decision making. This Special Issue will bring together the work of scientists who address global and local environmental issues with concepts, theories, and methods of cognitive psychology. The aim is to bring about empirical, theoretical, and conceptual advances in the scientific knowledge of how people perceive, understand, react to, and solve environmental problems. The Special Issue covers studies on individual and collective judgment and decision making, heuristics and biases, reasoning and thinking, memory, attention, perception, and problem solving in relation to natural resources, environment, climate change, and related sustainability issues. The issue covers, but is not limited to, human-environment cognition such as that underpinning compensatory green beliefs, rebound effects, the negative footprint illusion, quantity insensitivity in consumption, effects of eco-labeling on consumer’s behavior and product perception, cognitive factors on energy-related behavior, heuristics in energy judgments, resource dilemmas and environmental impact estimates. While these examples concern how people influence the environment in a broad sense, which is another focus of the Special Issue, the issue also welcomes studies of how the environment influences people, but only if these studies inform strategies for efficient natural resource management and solutions to environmental problems; for example, studies on the influence of energy efficiency measures on occupant satisfaction and other psychological factors in buildings. 

Prof. Dr. Patrik Sörqvist
Dr. Doctor Alan Kabanshi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cognition
  • judgment
  • thinking and reasoning
  • problem solving
  • decision making
  • memory
  • perception
  • heuristics and biases
  • environment
  • sustainability
  • climate change

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 753 KiB  
Article
‘To LED or Not to LED?’: Using Color Priming for Influencing Consumers’ Preferences of Light Bulbs
by Iris Gavish, Abraham Haim and Doron Kliger
Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1401; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031401 - 29 Jan 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2724
Abstract
Recently, we have seen energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) light bulbs rapidly replace incandescent ones. However, results of new research are indicative of adverse health impacts of LED lighting, which is characterized by enriched blue light. Our study aims to reveal whether using color [...] Read more.
Recently, we have seen energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) light bulbs rapidly replace incandescent ones. However, results of new research are indicative of adverse health impacts of LED lighting, which is characterized by enriched blue light. Our study aims to reveal whether using color priming by attaching red/green traffic-light icons on light bulbs influences consumers’ preferences of light bulbs. We conducted a field study simulating the buying process, in which participants (N = 572) were presented with LED and carbon incandescent bulbs. We alternately displayed two pairs of bulbs: (1) in their original packaging and (2) in packages marked with traffic light icons (red = LED). Our results confirm that traffic light icons significantly (p < 0.01) increase the odds of choosing the healthier carbon bulb. The results highlight the benefits of attaching traffic light icons to light bulb packaging, helping consumers to make more health-conscientious purchasing decisions. Nowadays, this study’s contribution is more significant due to COVID-19 restrictions and stay-at-home policies, since people work or study remotely, which increases their exposure to household lighting. These results may incentivize policymakers to enforce adding traffic light icons to light bulb packaging, thus encouraging LED light bulb manufacturers to reduce the blue light component in order to improve the health aspect of their bulbs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability)
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13 pages, 956 KiB  
Communication
Confidence in Local, National, and International Scientists on Climate Change
by Aaron C. Sparks, Heather Hodges, Sarah Oliver and Eric R. A. N. Smith
Sustainability 2021, 13(1), 272; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010272 - 30 Dec 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2477
Abstract
In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims [...] Read more.
In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability)
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14 pages, 396 KiB  
Article
Communicating Climate Change Risk: A Content Analysis of IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers
by P. Marijn Poortvliet, Meredith T. Niles, Jeroen A. Veraart, Saskia E. Werners, Fiona C. Korporaal and Bob C. Mulder
Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 4861; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12124861 - 15 Jun 2020
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 6930
Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of climate change risk communication in terms of its theoretical potential to stimulate recipients’ awareness and behavioral change. We selected the summary for policy makers (SPM) of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in [...] Read more.
This study investigated the effectiveness of climate change risk communication in terms of its theoretical potential to stimulate recipients’ awareness and behavioral change. We selected the summary for policy makers (SPM) of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in order to conduct a content analysis; the extended parallel process model and construal level theory served as conceptual lenses to perform the analysis. Specifically, we evaluated to what extent the SPM included informational elements of threat, efficacy and psychological distance related to climate change. The results showed that threat information was prominently present, but efficacy information was less frequently included, and when it was, more often in the latter parts of the SPM. With respect to construal level it was found that in the IPCC report concrete representations were used only sparingly. Theoretical relevance and implications for climate change risk communication with key audiences are discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability)
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10 pages, 943 KiB  
Article
Assuming the Best: Individual Differences in Compensatory “Green” Beliefs Predict Susceptibility to the Negative Footprint Illusion
by Douglas MacCutcheon, Mattias Holmgren and Andreas Haga
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3414; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083414 - 22 Apr 2020
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 3486
Abstract
Recent years have seen a marked increase in carbon emissions despite pledges made by the international community at the Paris Accord in 2015 to reduce fossil fuel production and consumption. Rebound effects could contribute to this phenomenon as, in which attempts to curb [...] Read more.
Recent years have seen a marked increase in carbon emissions despite pledges made by the international community at the Paris Accord in 2015 to reduce fossil fuel production and consumption. Rebound effects could contribute to this phenomenon as, in which attempts to curb carbon emissions might have inadvertently led to an upswing in fossil fuel usage. The present study hypothesizes that rebound effects are driven by a misapplication of compensatory balancing heuristics, with the unintended outcome of producing inaccurate estimates of the environmental impact of “green” or environmentally friendly labelled products or behaviors. The present study therefore aims to investigate the relationship between participants’ degree of compensatory thinking (e.g., “Recycling compensates for driving a car”) and their susceptibility to the Negative Footprint Illusion, a widely replicated phenomenon demonstrating that the presence of “green” products biases carbon footprint estimations. One hundred and twelve participants were asked to complete a 15-item Compensatory Green Beliefs scale and to estimate the total carbon footprint of a set of 15 conventional houses, followed by a set that included 15 “green” houses in addition to 15 conventional houses. Results indicated that participants, on average, believed that the “green” houses were carbon neutral, and that susceptibility to the Negative Footprint Illusion was predicted by performance on the Compensatory Green Beliefs scale. This is the first study confirming that individual differences in cognitive processes (i.e., Compensatory Green Beliefs) are indeed related to inaccurate estimates of “green” products, providing a foundation for further investigation of the influence of “green” and compensatory beliefs on carbon footprint estimates. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Cognitive Psychology of Environmental Sustainability)
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