Eco-friendly labeling biases judgments of environmental impact

Abstract

Recent research has identified some psychological barriers that contribute to human inaction on climate change. In the current study, we explore how people perceive the environmental impact of eco-labelled products. We developed a new computerized footprint illusion task based on the trial-by-trial causal learning task. Participants were presented with monthly records of a community household carbon footprint. Thus, this task differs from previous ones in that it allows learning from data. Participants tended to judge the environmental impact of new buildings to be weaker when they were labelled as “green” than when they were no labelled, indicating an effect of eco-labelling. This biased perception occurred even when participants were exposed to information that should assist them in making accurate and unbiased judgments, which indicates that the expectations induced by the labels affected how participants interpreted the data. Implications for the design of strategies aimed at promoting better understanding of the environmental impact of human choices and at minimizing environmental harm are discussed.