The Impact of the Gain-Loss Frame on College Students' Willingness to Participate in the Individual Low-Carbon Behavior Rewarding System (ILBRS): The Mediating Role of Environmental Risk Perception

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 17; p. 11008
• Main Authors: Qi, Ani, Ji, Zeyu, Gong, Yuanchao, Yang, Bo, Sun, Yan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 02.09.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Behavior; Carbon; Citizen participation; Climate change; College students; Communication; Consumption; Cost control; Decision making; Design; Emissions; Energy; Environmental behavior; Environmental risk; Gain-Loss; Greenhouse gases; Households; Humans; Incentives; Information processing; Monetary incentives; Perception; Perceptions; Risk perception; Students; Surveys and Questionnaires; Beijing China; Europe; China; framing effect; Individual Low-Carbon Behavior Rewarding System (ILBRS); environmental risk perception; nudge
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph191711008

Since Chinese households account for more than half of the country's total carbon emissions, efforts focused on consumption will be key to reaching carbon reduction targets. The Individual Low-carbon Behavior Rewarding System (ILBRS) is an emerging mechanism in China that encourages the public to develop a low-carbon lifestyle and it is critical to look for various approaches to enhance the public's willingness to participate in it. The framing effect has been widely used to study pro-environmental behavior as a low-cost nudge. We used an online questionnaire (N = 320) to investigate how framing information (loss and gain framing) influenced people's willingness to participate in the ILBRS through the mediation of environmental risk perception. The results indicated that the public's willingness to participate in the ILBRS under the loss frame was significantly higher than the gain frame. Furthermore, environmental risk perception played a mediating role in the proceedings. Based on our findings, the designers and promoters of ILBRS systems could employ loss-frame information to promote the public's willingness to participate in the ILBRS and drive more people to live a low-carbon life in the process of mechanism construction, information communication, and operational promotion.