Andreas Nilsson Hed

• Professor
• Professor at University of Gothenburg

Annually, millions of tons of plastic waste end up in rivers and the oceans, obstructing the surrounding ecosystems and resulting in substantial environmental degradation, as well as unforeseeable negative consequences for several species, including humans. In tackling this plastics crisis, the United Nations Environmental Assembly has decided to d...

Meat consumption is associated with both public health risks and substantial CO2 emissions. In a large‐scale field‐experiment, we applied four nudges to the digital menus in 136 hamburger restaurants. The nudges promoted vegetarian food purchases by either (1) changing the menu position of vegetarian food, or aligning vegetarian food with (2) a hed...

People perform pro-environmental behaviors not only out of intrinsic motivation, but also due to external factors such as expected social approval or financial gain. To the extent that people use their own motivations to infer the motivation of others, people may view descriptive norms favoring pro-environmental behavior as extrinsically motivated....

Two experiments tested how environmental policy acceptability of US conservatives and liberals was influenced by manipulating the level (minority vs. majority) and source (in-group vs. outgroup) of normative support for policy. Results from 928 MechanicalTurk users (Study 1: N = 268, Study 2: N = 660) indicated that when evaluating an in-group poli...

Public acceptance is a precondition for implementing taxes and laws aimed at mitigating climate change. However, it still remains challenging to understand its determinants for the climate community. Here, we use a meta-analytic approach to examine the role of public opinion about climate change taxes and laws. Fifteen variables were examined by sy...

Research on environmental policy support utilises different categorisations of policies, for example, differentiating between policies assumed to be perceived as rewarding or punishing. Do citizens' perception of environmental policies also lend itself to this categorisation? Based on an exhaustive sample of active policies in Sweden, this study pr...

The Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have a key role to play in understanding which factors and policies would motivate, encourage and enable different actors to adopt a wide range of sustainable energy behaviours and support the required system changes and policies. The SSH can provide critical insights into how consumers could be empowered to...

Public acceptance is a precondition for implementing climate change mitigation policies. What, then, determines acceptance of these policies? Based on 76 datasets from 34 countries, generating a total sample of 146,817 participants, we report a series of meta-analyses assessing the importance of 15 determinants for accepting climate change mitigati...

Växthuseffekt, minskad biologisk mångfald, utfiskning av haven - listan över akuta miljöproblem kan göras lång. Drivande i utvecklingen är grundläggande psykologiska mekanismer hos människan, som leder till beslut och handlingar såväl hos enskilda individer i vardagslivet som på högsta politiska nivå. Med hjälp av psykologisk vetenskap beskrivs i...

To facilitate an understanding of why some environmental policies are acceptable to private citizens and why some are not, we review individual factors that influence the acceptability of environmental policy measures. The factors are categorized in demographic factors, such as age and gender, personal factors such as values and ideology, and polic...

In this study, we design and explore interventions encouraging pro-environmental donations by testing social norms and anticipated positive emotions. The social norms-based intervention included descriptive and injunctive social normative information while the emotions-based intervention included information about anticipated positive emotions. The...

The phenomenon of collective action and the origin of collective action problems have been extensively and systematically studied in the social sciences. Yet, while we have substantial knowledge about the factors promoting collective action at the local level, we know far less about how these insights travel to large-scale collective action problem...

Climate change is primarily driven by human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and may therefore be mitigated by changes to human behavior (Clayton et al., 2015; IPCC, 2018). Despite efforts to raise awareness and concern about climate change, GHG emissions continue to rise (IPCC, 2018). Climate change seems to be at odds with the immediate, pr...

Descriptive norms guide social behavior by informing what other people do. In a conceptual proposition, we suggest that descriptive norms also could signal what other people don’t do. Building on the evolutionary predisposition to more urgently attend to negative than positive information, we hypothesize that people are more strongly influenced by...

Setting up a contest is a popular means to promote pro-environmental behaviors. Yet, research on contest-based interventions is scarce while norm-based interventions have gained much attention. In two field experiments, we randomly assigned 79 apartments to either a contest-based or a norm-based electricity conservation intervention and measured kW...

Normative feedback has shown to promote energy conservation, indicating that people are motivated to adjust their energy usage to others. Yet, the effect of social norms is conditional. Adding to past research, we proposed a norm distance effect, hypothesizing that the influential power of social norms increases as others’ behavior comes closer to...

This chapter gives a brief overview of different types of social dilemmas. It describes motives that are important for choices in social dilemmas. Social dilemmas are situations in which individual interests are in conflict with collective interests. A resource dilemma arises when multiple individuals share a limited resource with free access, wher...

This experimental study (N = 139) examines the role of emotions in climate change risk communication. Drawing on Construal Level Theory, we tested how abstract vs. concrete descriptions of climate threat affect basic and self-conscious emotions and three emotion regulation strategies: changing oneself, repairing the situation and distancing oneself...

Interventions using either contests or norms can promote environmental behavioral change. Yet research on the implications of contest-based and norm-based interventions is lacking. Based on Goal-framing theory, we suggest that a contest-based intervention frames a gain goal promoting intensive but instrumental behavioral engagement. In contrast, th...

The Gothenburg congestion tax was introduced in 2013 and later subjected to a consultative referendum where the citizens, despite getting first-hand experience with the scheme, rejected it. This article explains voting behavior in the referendum using both self-expressed motives and five nested models to test various explanations suggested in previ...

When implementing environmental education and interventions to promote one pro-environmental behavior, it is seldom asked if and how non-target pro-environmental behaviors are affected. The spillover effect proposes that engaging in one behavior affects the probability of engagement or disengaging in a second behavior. Therefore, the positive spill...

People's acceptability of environmental policy measures is vital for a successful implementation. Identifying how information concerning radical policy measures can be improved may increase support and generate more positive attitudes towards the policy. The effect of tailored information on acceptability towards implementing a proposed congestion...

An increasing body of literature suggests that acceptance of environmental policy instruments tends to change along with increased experience of the same. Among the more popular examples of this are the growing number of congestion-pricing initiatives emerging around the world; in several cases the acceptability of these projects among the public h...

The focus theory of normative conduct proposes that normative influence can be enhanced by focusing people's attention to social norms. In a quasi-experimental field study, four normative prompts were compared on their ability to promote energy conservation behavior in public bathrooms. In line with an attention-reactance proposition, prompts that...

Attitudes and beliefs concerning a congestion tax in Gothenburg, Sweden, were investigated in a three-wave panel with 4,738 respondents, twice before and once after the implementation. Attitudes were more positive after the implementation. Perceived environmental outcomes and value expressive beliefs were most strongly related to attitudes toward t...

The study tests two behavioral intervention programs that were aimed at changing energy-related behaviors in an office setting. Participants were 93 office employees in three different departments of a construction company. Each department was randomly assigned to a four-week intervention to one of the following three conditions: control, intervent...

Two field experiments were carried out to study (a) the effects on energy savings of continuous visual feedback via in-home displays, and (b) the motives for responding or not. In study 1, 40 participants living in separate or semi-detached houses in two different towns participated. All participants received a questionnaire and a list of possible...

Framing effects on emotional responses in a green electricity choice are investigated in a survey of a random sample of 655 Swedish residents. The results show that overall more positive and less negative emotions are experienced for a promotion frame (“choosing green electricity and paying more”) than for a prevention frame (“not choosing green el...

This study explores the relationship between people's values, loci of control and pro-environmental behaviours. 'Locus of control' refers to the extent to which people attribute control over events in life either to themselves or to external sources beyond their influence: in the former case, the individual is described as having an internal locus...

We review the personal and social influences on pro-environmental concern and behaviour, with an emphasis on recent research. The number of these influences suggests that understanding pro-environmental concern and behaviour is far more complex than previously thought. The influences are grouped into 18 personal and social factors. The personal fac...

Visualisering av energianvändning genom feedback via display är ett sätt att koppla beteende lite närmare konsekvenser. Tidigare studier inom området display-feedback pekar på att man kan uppnå 2-9% minskad förbrukning av hushållsel. Syftet med pilotprojektet är att pröva hur visualisering via display kan påverka hyresgästers förbrukning av hushåll...

While many earlier studies have found that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, more recent experimental evidence suggests that this discrepancy vanishes for standard consumption goods when an incentive-compatible design without misconceptions is u...

The choice and use of theory is of primary concern to the development of environmental psychology. Since there are so many potential theories that may be applied in the environmental domain, the choice of theory is greatly influencing the cumulative empirical knowledge that constitutes the field and the development of the discipline. Two issues of...

The study investigates determinants of attitudes towards environmental policy measures among decision makers in private companies responsible for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Acceptance of climate change policy measures was investigated using a questionnaire sent to a sample of decision makers in the private sector addressed as privat...

Empirical evidence suggests that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, and that this discrepancy tends to be especially large when valuing public goods. This paper hypothesizes that differences in emotions (e.g. regret) and moral perceptions can acc...

Objective. The thought that environmental concern is rooted in religious beliefs and values has been raised by many writers. Different claims have been made about whether the nature of this relationship is positive or negative, and empirical evidence is mixed. In line with research on attitudes and values, this study examines the hypothesis that un...

The present study examined how values, organizational goals and norms influence willingness to accept climate change policy measures within organizations. Respondents were 356 decision makers within the public and private sectors in a metropolitan area of Sweden. Regression models were estimated to investigate the mediating effect of norms on the r...

Two studies examined the role of values in behavioural reactions to environmental policy measures. Respondents were 118 undergraduate students. The first study was aimed at testing a new measure of value activation. Ostensibly participating in a study concerning semantic memory, participants were presented with a list of value words to remember. Th...