| Sustainable consumption: a self- concept perspective Jan Willem Bolderdijk Department of Marketing University of Groningen

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| How to motivate consumers? › Current practice:  Financial incentives (energy taxes, discounts, subsidies)  Raising awareness (warnings, labels, campaigns)

| Assumptions › Consumers (only) act in their short-term self-interest  Campaigns should explicate monetary benefits of sustainable consumption 4

| Self-concept maintenance  People balance self-interest with self- image concerns (Mazar & Zhong, 2008) 5

| Field experiment

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| (Bolderdijk, Steg, Geller, Lehman & Postmes, Nature Climate Change, 2012)

| Awareness campaigns › Assumption  ‘Information gap’  Information => knowledge/awareness => change › Literature  Cognitive dissonance - Values

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| Effect of environmental information 11 (Bolderdijk, Gorsira, Keizer & Steg, submitted)

| Electric vehicles

| Marketing electric vehicles › Assumption: Limited uptake due to range anxiety  Strategy: Downplay/counteract functional downsides › Self-concept motive: early adopters buy EV for symbolic function  Costly-signalling (e.g. Griskevicius et al, 2010) - Functional downsides need not prohibit uptake 13

| Q1: How important are these attributes when buying an electric car?

| Buying Intention Beliefs attributes electric car Instrumental (M = 3.8, SD = 0.8) Environmental (M = 5.2, SD = 1.0) Symbolic (M = 2.7, SD = 1.1) n.s Β’s: Q2: Rate a “typical electric car” on these attributes (Noppers, Keizer, Bolderdijk & Steg, submitted)

| Conclusion › Current assumptions on how to motivate consumers may be misguided › Motivation  Look beyond the usual suspects, and consider: - Self-concept - Values - Status 16