Can an act of joint action motivate individuals for further action towards a better environment?

Abstract

Climate change represents the largest crisis of present times, and its mitigation is considered the biggest challenge humans may have ever faced (Raihani & Aitken 2011). The crucial question is, how to be effectively engaged as a society in its mitigation? A lot of effort has been put into strengthening pro-environmental actions at the individual level; however, this has not shown to be effective enough (Fritsche et al., 2018). And that mainly for two reasons. The first is that many people feel like they have too little impact and believe they can’t make any difference on their own, which subsequently leads to apathy and inaction. And the second is that even if people would believe that their personal contribution is important, the anticipated inaction of others can de-motivate them (Fritsche & Masson, 2021). However, a promising strategy has emerged in recent years that addresses these issues, which is labeled as Joint action. This research aims to bring new insides into this field by exploring the relationship between joint action and motivation, specifically whether an act of joint action can motivate individuals to engage in further activities with group members and additional actions toward a better environment. An experiment with two experimental conditions was conducted to explore differences in motivation between people in high coordination and low coordination condition. The results didn’t significantly confirm the expectation that people in high coordination condition will be more motivated for further engagement. This suggests that a single act of joint action, as conducted in this experiment – in its intensity and task characteristics, might not be sufficient to enhance motivation for further action. However, further research is needed to overcome the limitations of this study and identify the optimal level of coordination required to effectively increase individuals' motivation for pro-environmental actions.