The feeling of ‘pride’, rather than ‘guilt’, is the best way to sell sustainable goods, research from WBS shows

You’ve heard of going green with envy, but what about green with pride? Research from the University of Warwick’s WBS showed that reminding buyers of the pride they felt after making environmentally friendly decisions was more likely to influence them to make greener choices in the future, rather than using guilt. And this factor has been key in more recent projects by WBS too.

The research from WBS (Warwick Business School), partnered with both Trinity Business School, and Cranfield School of Water, Energy, and the Environment, was conducted for a paper titled Pride in my past: Influencing sustainable choices through behavioural recall.

The team spoke more than 300 people as part of the experiment and asked what kind of car they would buy next. Those who were reminded of the pride they felt after a previous sustainable purchase were found to be significantly more likely to choose a low-carbon car as their next purchase because they wanted to repeat the same positive feelings.

By contrast, those who were reminded of the guilt they felt after a previous unsustainable purchase did not imagine themselves feeling proud about buying a low-carbon car as their next purchase. They also wouldn’t feel guilty about buying an environmentally damaging car either. Thus, the feeling of pride was found to be the biggest influencer of sustainable purchasing.

Pride has been a key factor in another sustainable project by WBS too. In 2022, a team of WBS students won a prestigious Hackathon competition, which involved addressing a sustainability issue in the wake of COP26.

The team’s project was centred around the design of a reward system of ‘carbon tokens’ for Sainsbury’s. The scheme would offer customers tokens in return for purchasing sustainable products. These could then be redeemed for other products or services at partner locations, traded in, or donated to a scheme that would see Sainsbury’s plant a tree. With the carbon tokens, the customers would be consistently rewarded, and reminded of the good impact that their sustainable purchasing will have.

The takeaway from the research and the award-winning student project? Positive reinforcement, rather than guilty feelings, could be the key to influencing a change to conscious, sustainable purchasing at an individual level.