Understanding environmental decision making: The association between stages of decision making and decisional conflict

TL;DR

The paper explores how people's stage in making environmental decisions affects their decisional conflict, suggesting that later stages are linked to less conflict.

Contribution

The study introduces a framework linking decision-making stages to decisional conflict in pro-environmental behaviors.

Findings

Participants in later stages of decision making experience less decisional conflict.

Stages of decision making correlate with the level of decisional conflict experienced.

Interventions should consider decision-making stages to better support environmental decisions.

Abstract

•People go through different stages when making environmental decisions.•Individuals experience decisional conflict when making decisions around pro-environmental behaviours.•Being in later stages of decision making is associated with less decisional conflict.•Stages of decision making might be taken into account in decision aids designed to support environmental decision making.

People go through different stages when making environmental decisions.

Individuals experience decisional conflict when making decisions around pro-environmental behaviours.

Being in later stages of decision making is associated with less decisional conflict.

Stages of decision making might be taken into account in decision aids designed to support environmental decision making.

Introduction: As research highlights how climate change impacts individual and planetary health, people might consider reducing their ecological footprint by acting pro-environmentally. However, their choice might depend on how far along they are in the process of deciding to act pro-environmentally (i.e., different stages of decision making) and on their experienced difficulty in deciding in favour of the environment and which behaviour to conduct (i.e., decisional conflict).

Methods: To explore in which stage participants find themselves (i.e., not yet thinking about choices, showing interest in doing so, actively considering options, approaching a decision, having already decided but remaining open to reconsideration, or being firmly committed to a decision with little chance of change) and whether their respective stages are correlated with their experienced decisional conflict, an online, cross-sectional questionnaire was distributed among a convenience sample of 418 English-, Dutch-, and Italian-speaking adults to measure participants’ demographics, stages, and extent to which they experience decisional conflict.

Results: Based on regression analyses, we observed that participants who were further along in the stages experienced less decisional conflict.

Conclusion: Therefore, we suggest that interventions (e.g., decision aids) take stages into account to better meet users’ needs and assist people in making environmental decisions.

Figures