I am interested in spillover effects: how does past behavior impact future behavior? Investigating environmental behavior is extremely relevant and important, and because I identified a gap in previous research, I decided to pick this topic for my thesis.

My thesis title is ‘Contribution ethic as a mechanism of environmental spillover effects’. In short, I investigated how the belief that one has contributed their part to society by acting environmentally friendly, influences their future behavior. Do they become inspired to do more, or are they satisfied and do less? Contrary to what some might think at first, we found that believing that one has done their part seems to lead to more and not less environmental friendly behavior!

The study we did was very theoretical, so it is important to test the practical application of the findings. Based on this study, when designing ways to impact people’s behaviour, it might be useful to remind people of their past environmental friendly behavior.

I was happy to do this research because I’m passionate about this topic and I could work with a supervisor that I knew was knowledgeable and very helpful. There is still a lot of research to be done in this field, and I hope to be a part of that in the future.