Promoting Pro-Environmental Behavior through Anticipated Emotions: A Preliminary Study Using an Episodic Recall Task to Encourage Positive Outcome Expectations

Abstract: In the context of the rapidly intensifying global environmental and energy crises, promoting pro-environmental behavior (PEB) at the individual level has become a critical challenge. However, PEB often requires additional effort and time in daily life while providing few direct benefits or immediate rewards to the actor, making sustained engagement difficult. To address this challenge, previous research has explored various interventions, including the dissemination of environmental knowledge, the provision of financial incentives, and the implementation of nudges. Although these interventions have been shown to produce measurable effects, they do not directly target the inherent “burdensomeness” of PEB, and their limitations have been acknowledged.Against this background, this study focuses on “anticipated emotions” as a novel approach to overcoming the difficulties associated with PEB. Anticipated emotions are feelings generated by imagining the outcomes of one’s actions, and they are known to strongly influence decision-making. In particular, two types of anticipated emotions—expectation (anticipation of favorable outcomes) and regret (anticipation of unfavorable outcomes)—are considered to play important roles in everyday choices. Based on this facts, this study hypothesizes that these two anticipated emotions can facilitate PEB. While conventional studies have primarily emphasized externally easing or guiding PEB, this study explores the potential of using emotions to positively reframe the inherent burdensomeness of such behaviors.To test this hypothesis, we developed a novel anticipated emotion induction task. They were asked to recall and describe personal experiences in which exerting effort despite inconvenience led to a positive outcome (expectation) or in which refraining from action due to inconvenience resulted in regret (regret). Each task provided typical examples before prompting them to write about their own experiences, thereby eliciting anticipated emotions in a direct and personalized manner. An experiment was conducted where participants were randomly assigned to either the anticipated emotion group or a control group and completed the tasks individually on a computer in a laboratory setting. Baseline PEB was measured using the Pro-environmental Behavior Task (PEBT), a virtual travel task in which participants completed 24 trials choosing between an environmentally friendly but slower transportation option (SEST) and an environmentally unfriendly but faster option (TEFT). The time difference between the two options varied randomly across trials (0, 5, 10, or 15 seconds).Following the baseline measurement, the participants in the anticipated emotion group completed the emotion induction task, whereas the control group completed neutral, non-emotion-inducing tasks of the same format. After the intervention, the PEBT was administered again to assess changes in behavioral choices. In addition, a post-experiment questionnaire measured their habitual PEB, emotional states, perceived value of burdensome actions, and personality traits.The results indicated a tendency for increased SEST choices in the anticipated emotion group after the intervention, suggesting that changes in the perceived value of burdensome actions may have partially mediated behavioral change. Although exploratory, these findings suggest that anticipated emotions can facilitate pro-environmental behavior by assigning positive value to actions that are otherwise perceived as burdensome. Detailed results will be reported in the final manuscript.

Keywords: Pro-environmental behavior, Anticipated emotions, Expectation, Regret, Decision-making in behavioral contexts

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007144

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