Ideally, pro-environmental consumer behavior leads to a lower impact on the environment. However, due to negative behavioral spillovers environmentally-friendly behavior could lead to an overall higher environmental impact if subsequent environmentally-unfriendly behavior occurs. In this exploratory interview study we focused on two pathways leading to negative spillover: a psychological path (perceived effort, moral licensing) and an economic path (rebound effects). We wanted to gain insight into people’s motivations to behave environmentally-unfriendly and to explore people’s level of awareness of both pathways. Our results indicate that pro-environmental behaviors that are associated with higher effort are performed less frequently, and that when people do not perform these behaviors they associate them with higher effort levels. When people perceive behaviors as more effortful they increasingly seem to use arguments to motivate and rationalize why performing the behavior is difficult or impossible. Moreover, we found that although some people can imagine that moral licensing and rebound effects could occur and can provide examples from their own lives, most people assess these concepts as not rational. People seem unaware of the relation between a first pro-environmental behavior and a subsequent behavior, and therefore inconsistencies in behavior go unnoticed. As people are good at rationalizing why they do not perform specific PEBs, they in general feel satisfied with their own pro-environmental actions. In order to discourage negative spillovers, we describe a number of approaches and research ideas aimed at taking away the grounds for rationalization.

中文翻译：

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合理化不一致的消费者行为。了解导致负面的环保行为在日常生活中溢出的途径

理想情况下，有利于环境的消费者行为会降低对环境的影响。但是，由于负面的行为外溢，如果随后发生不环保行为，那么环保行为可能导致总体上更大的环境影响。在这项探索性访谈研究中，我们关注导致负面溢出的两种途径：心理途径（感知的努力，道德许可）和经济途径（反弹效应）。我们想深入了解人们行为举止对环境有害的动机，并探索人们对这两种途径的认识水平。我们的结果表明，与较高努力相关的亲环境行为执行的频率较低，并且当人们不执行这些行为时，他们会将其与较高努力水平相关联。当人们认为行为更加努力时，他们似乎越来越多地使用论据来激励和合理化为什么难以或不可能执行行为。此外，我们发现，尽管有些人可以想象会出现道德许可和反弹效应，并可以提供自己生活中的例子，但大多数人认为这些概念是不合理的。人们似乎没有意识到最初的环保行为和随后的行为之间的关系，因此，行为上的不一致就没有引起人们的注意。由于人们善于合理化为什么不执行特定的PEB，因此人们通常会对自己的环保行动感到满意。为了阻止负面溢出，我们描述了许多旨在消除合理化基础的方法和研究思想。