Leveraging the Varieties of Interdependence Theory to Encourage Sustainable Environmental Choices – CULTUREMATCHING

Achieving the UN sustainable development require a global-applied effort, it is essential to consider cultural relevance to effectively motivate sustainable consumption. The proposed research aims to create culturally relevant messages to encourage people to engage in sustainable actions aimed at combating climate change. Past research on environmental decision-making have primarily used generic messages to motivate sustainable decisions, such as recycling and purchasing environment-friendly products; with a couple exceptions, they have not taken culture into account, assuming their findings are applicable across all cultures. However, extensive research in cultural psychology suggests that culture shapes people's cognition, emotion, motivation, and decision making. The PIs’ preliminary research has found that invoking culturally important concepts can increase the effectiveness of messages motivating sustainable behaviour. For example, American students have shown a keen interest in courses promoting environmental sustainability that emphasised concepts of independence and choice, an ethos dominant in the United States, over the ones advocating interdependence. Such findings show the potential for culturally appropriate messaging. The goal of the proposed research is to expand these findings across a wider range of countries by building upon the recent theory of "varieties of interdependence”, i.e., independence and analytic thinking in the West, harmony-promoting interdependence and holistic thinking in North-East Asia, logic-based argumentative interdependence in South Asia, self-assertive interdependence combined with holistic thinking in the Arab world, and emotionally expressive interdependence in Latin America. Our research will invoke these dominant cultural frames to promote two forms of sustainable behaviour: carbon offset purchase and eating plant-based foods.