Séminaire – Tobias Brosch

Environmental Trait Affect
While most accounts of the determinants of environmental decision-making emphasize cognitive factors such as beliefs or values, research has only recently begun to address the role of emotions and affective responses. We developed the Environmental Trait Affect Questionnaire (ETA-Q), a self-report instrument assessing individual dispositions to experience affect in environmentally relevant situations. Across a series of seven studies (N=9205), we investigated the factor structure, nomological network and physiological correlates of Environmental Trait Affect, and assessed its impact on environmental decision-making. We found support for a five-factor structure of the Environmental Trait Affect construct. The five ETA-Q factors contributed substantially to the prediction of environmental decision-making in a variety of domains, such as consumption decisions, investment decisions, donation decisions as well as political decisions, over and above previously identified psychological determinants. By demonstrating systematic influences of different facets of Environmental Trait Affect on environmental decision-making, we point out new strategies to leverage the adaptive function of affect and emotions to in the context of intervention strategies aiming to promote more sustainable consumption behaviors.

Tobias Brosch, Université de Genève (Consumer Decision & Sustainable Behavior Lab), Suisse