Understanding environmental decision making: The association between stages of decision making and decisional conflict - 25/07/25

Highlights |
• | People go through different stages when making environmental decisions. |
• | Individuals experience decisional conflict when making decisions around pro-environmental behaviours. |
• | Being in later stages of decision making is associated with less decisional conflict. |
• | Stages of decision making might be taken into account in decision aids designed to support environmental decision making. |
Abstract |
Introduction: As research highlights how climate change impacts individual and planetary health, people might consider reducing their ecological footprint by acting pro-environmentally. However, their choice might depend on how far along they are in the process of deciding to act pro-environmentally (i.e., different stages of decision making) and on their experienced difficulty in deciding in favour of the environment and which behaviour to conduct (i.e., decisional conflict).
Methods: To explore in which stage participants find themselves (i.e., not yet thinking about choices, showing interest in doing so, actively considering options, approaching a decision, having already decided but remaining open to reconsideration, or being firmly committed to a decision with little chance of change) and whether their respective stages are correlated with their experienced decisional conflict, an online, cross-sectional questionnaire was distributed among a convenience sample of 418 English-, Dutch-, and Italian-speaking adults to measure participants’ demographics, stages, and extent to which they experience decisional conflict.
Results: Based on regression analyses, we observed that participants who were further along in the stages experienced less decisional conflict.
Conclusion: Therefore, we suggest that interventions (e.g., decision aids) take stages into account to better meet users’ needs and assist people in making environmental decisions.
Il testo completo di questo articolo è disponibile in PDF.Keywords : Pro-environmental behaviours, Stages of decision making, Decisional conflict
Mappa
| Note: This research study is part of a joint project together that was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF) Vissers, E., Richelli, L., Gorini, A., Meijers, M. H. C., Ruiter, R. A., Smit, E. S., & Gültzow, T. (2022, July 29). Understanding decisional conflict around environmental decisions and the influence of stages of decision making. Retrieved from mgvjb . |
Vol 24
Articolo 100467- luglio 2025 Ritorno al numeroBenvenuto su EM|consulte, il riferimento dei professionisti della salute.
