ABSTRACT

Personal response efficacy beliefs are vital in instigating, maintaining, and catalyzing environmental behavior change. In this experimental study (N = 249), we investigated whether such efficacy beliefs could be stimulated using Virtual Reality. In a VR-supermarket, participants would see interactive pop-ups displaying impact messages when they picked up products, these are messages that display the (environmental or health) impact of a product. Our results show that these impact messages are effective in stimulating personal response efficacy beliefs and subsequently pro-environmental food choices. The heightened personal response efficacy beliefs positively affected maintaining and catalyzing behavior change (i.e. positive spill-over) up to two weeks after the VR-experience. The effectiveness of the impact messages did not depend on appeal type (health vs environmental appeal) or modality (text + visual vs text only) of the message. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

摘要

个人反应效能信念对于激发、维持和催化环境行为改变至关重要。在这项实验研究 ( N  = 249) 中，我们调查了是否可以使用虚拟现实来激发这种功效信念。在 VR 超市中，参与者会看到显示影响信息的交互式弹出窗口当他们拿起产品时，这些信息显示了产品的（环境或健康）影响。我们的研究结果表明，这些影响信息在激发个人反应效能信念和随后的亲环境食物选择方面是有效的。在 VR 体验后的两周内，提高的个人反应效能信念对维持和催化行为改变（即积极溢出）产生了积极影响。影响信息的有效性不取决于信息的诉求类型（健康与环境诉求）或形式（文本+视觉与仅文本）。讨论了理论和实践意义。