The actions of others, and what others approve of, can be a powerful tool for promoting pro-environmental behaviour. A potential barrier to the utility of social norms however are cognitive biases in how we perceive others, including the better-than-average effect. This effect describes the tendency for people to think they are exceptional, especially when compared with their peers. In order to investigate the role of the better-than-average effect in the context of climate-relevant pro-environmental behaviour, we administered questions as part of a larger online survey of 5,219 nationally representative Australians. Participants were asked to report whether they engaged in a list of 21 pro-environmental behaviours, and then asked to estimate how their engagement compared with the average Australian. Over half of our participants ‘self-enhanced’; they overestimated their engagement in pro-environmental behaviours relative to others. ‘Self-enhancement’ was related to reduced perceptions of personal harm from climate change, more favourable assessments of coping ability, less guilt, and lower moral and ethical duty to take action to prevent climate change. These relationships held when participants sceptical about anthropogenic climate change were removed from analyses. We discuss the implications of the findings for the use of social norms in promoting pro-environmental behaviour.
Understanding the normalisation of recycling behaviour and its implications for other pro-environmental behaviours: A review of social norms and recycling