Santa Clara University Professor Studies Whether Ecological Footprint Feedback Motivates or Discourages Sustainable Behavior

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Santa Clara University Assistant Professor of Psychology Amara Brook studied how likely people were to change their behavior if they learned that their lifestyle was environmentally unsustainable. She wrote about it in an article titled “Ecological Footprint Feedback: Motivating or Discouraging?” which was published in Social Influence.

Brook studied 212 undergraduate college students. In the first week, they answered questions on how much they based their self-worth on their environmental behavior. In the second week, they completed an ecological footprint questionnaire and received bogus positive or negative feedback about their ecological footprint. The students were then given the opportunity to write a letter to a politician on any public policy issue of their choice. Whether they wrote a pro-environmental letter was the measurement of their pro-environmental behavior.

The results showed that negative ecological footprint feedback only slightly increased pro-environmental behavior for people who were already personally committed to environmentalism, and decreased pro-environmental political behavior among people who were not already committed to environmentalism. These results suggest that footprint feedback may motivate committed environmentalists to behave more sustainably, but for other people it may backfire.

For media interviews and/or a copy of Brook’s article contact: Connie Kim Coutain | [e-mail] | 408-554-5126 O | 408-829-4836 C

About Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master’s universities, California’s oldest operating higher education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.