The role of implicit goal hierarchies in effectively promoting sustainable consumption

The European Union could reduce its carbon footprint by nearly 25% by changing consumption patterns (Thogersen, 2021). A crucial component to accomplish this shift is for consumers to consistently make sustainable choices. From a goal-attainment perspective, the observation that consumers (often) engage in behaviour they know is unsustainable, implies that competing goal are deemed more valuable, either at the implicit level or at the explicit level. Interventions are thus needed to make consumers prioritize sustainability goals, even at the implicit level. This paper introduces a novel implicit measure designed to capture inter-individual differences in implicit goal hierarchies (i.e., the Goal-IMPACT, Experiment 1) and demonstrates how these implicit goal hierarchies are influenced by in-store (nudging) interventions (Experiment 2) and fear-appeal messages (Experiment 3). Furthermore, given the challenge of promoting multiple sustainable choices, we investigate the role of implicit goal hierarchies in behavioural spillover (i.e., the influence of an intervention on not-targeted behaviour). Experiment 4 is designed to demonstrate that experimentally induced changes in (implicit) goal hierarchies determine whether behavioural interventions result in positive (i.e., subsequent behaviours remain driven by sustainable goals) vs. negative spillover effects (i.e., subsequent behaviours revert to competing goals). Specifically, we expect the elicitation of sustainable behaviour at a first moment to result in sustainable behaviour at a subsequent moment only in participants who prioritize sustainability at the implicit level (i.e., positive spillover). Ultimately, this research will help identify new pathways to promote sustainable consumer behaviour effectively. Results will be presented at the conference.