Sustainability Marketing:

Human Nature, Consumption, and Conservation

VLADAS GRISKEVICIUS

MARK VAN VUGT*

*Vladas Griskevicius is an Assistant Professor of Marketing, Carlson School of Management,

University of Minnesota, 321 19th Ave S. Suite 3-150, Minneapolis, MN 55455, (612) 626-

3793, fax (612) 624-8804, vladasg@umn.edu.

Mark van Vugt is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, VU University

Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 316-538-

53831, M.van.Vugt@psy.vu.nl.

1

Many scholars and policy makers agree that people must reduce their environmental impact

and adopt more sustainable lifestyles. Yet many strategies to foster sustainable consumption

have not been very successful. We propose that marketers can more effectively motivate

sustainable behaviors through a deeper understanding of evolved human nature. By

considering the ancestral roots of consumption and conservation, we present a framework for

sustainability marketing. The framework suggests that many environmental problems are

caused or exacerbated by five human tendencies: (1) propensity for self-interest, (2)

motivation for relative status, (3) predisposition to copy others, (4) proclivity to be short-

sighted, and (5) mismatches between modern and ancestral environments. By considering

how and why evolutionary forces continue to shape modern consumer behaviors, we show

how an improved understanding of human nature (I) can be harnessed to develop more

optimal marketing messages to motivate sustainable behavior, (II) can prevent widespread

and costly marketing mistakes, and (III) can spark future research to lessen resource

depletion, restrain wasteful consumption, and spur sustainable behavior.

Keywords: Environmental conservation, social influence, sustainability, overconsumption,

resource depletion, evolutionary psychology

2

“The suggestion that our evolved human nature is a source of environmental exploitation and

degradation is not a claim that nothing can be done, but a warning that effective

conservation and remediation strategies will have to incorporate an understanding of

relevant evolved psychological processes in order to modify human action.”

—Wilson, Daly and Gordon (1998, p. 517)

Easter Island is one of the most remote places on earth. The island lies in the Pacific

Ocean over 2,000 miles from the west coast of South America. Yet despite its relative

insignificance in the modern world, Easter Island offers a telling lesson about consumption,

human nature, and environmental sustainability (Bahn and Flenley 1992; Diamond 1995).

When the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen visited the island on Easter Sunday in

1722, he found a barren landscape inhabited by a society on the verge of collapse. Yet only a

few hundred years earlier, the island was covered with lush forests and had a large, thriving

economy. Roggeveen was shocked to learn what had taken place in only a few hundred years.

When the first settlers arrived on the island, the islanders divided up into clans. Each clan

established its own center for cultural, economic, and religious activity. At each ceremonial

site, clans began erecting massive stone statues to signal their status. To transport the colossal

statues across the island, inhabitants had to drag them using large tree trunks as rollers. So

many trees were required for this task that by the time of Roggeveen’s arrival, the island was

almost completely deforested and statue construction had been brought to a halt.

Deforestation caused dramatic ecological, social, and economic problems. The shortage of

trees forced inhabitants to stop building wooden houses and canoes needed for fishing. Tree

removal also produced soil erosion, leading to constant food shortages. Diminishing natural

resources intensified conflicts between clans, resulting in a state of near-permanent warfare.

Without trees for building transportation, the people were trapped on the island, unable to

escape the consequences of their self-inflicted, environmental collapse.

3

The fate of Easter Island serves as a warning to the modern world. Like Easter Island,

our planet has limited resources to support growing human populations and their increasing

demands. Like the islanders, we have no practical means to escape our self-inflicted fate.

Natural resources such as land, fresh water, food, and oil are being depleted at unprecedented

rates. A single, average American consumes over 200 pounds of meat and burns 900 gallons

of gasoline each year, while producing over 1600 pounds of garbage. With current

technologies, we will need at least four planet Earths if every person in the world were to

reach Western levels of consumption (OECD 2001). The impact of these activities not only

contributes to resource crises, biodiversity losses, and climate change, but it also creates new

problems that could have devastating consequences for the health and well-being of future

generations. Of course, this is nothing new. The Easter Island tragedy suggests that humans

are very capable of—and sometimes very willing to—destroy their own environment.

Why have people been so slow to respond to environmental problems? Why are

strategies aimed at changing environmental practices often not very effective? And how can

we bring about enduring changes in consumer behavior to foster a sustainable life style?

Marketers and consumer researchers have a long history of investigating resource

conservation and sustainable behavior (e.g., Allen 1982; Anderson and Claxton 1982;

Berkowitz and Haines 1984; Craig and McCann 1978; Houston 1983; Fritzsche 1981;

McNeill and Wilkie 1979). Almost thirty years ago, an entire special issue of the Journal of

Consumer Research was dedicated to energy conservation (McDougall et al. 1981). Since

then, the majority of multi-national firms such as Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble, Wells Fargo,

and KPMG have incorporated green marketing initiatives as key components of their

marketing strategies. This practice has reinvigorated consumer researchers to better

understand green consumer behavior (e.g., Luchs, Naylor, Irwin and Raghunathan 2010;

Peattie and Peattie 2009; Thogersen 2010). While our field is producing important insights on

4

sustainable consumption, marketers, and behavioral scientists more generally, have been

mute about the deeper ancestral roots of human environmental activities. We believe that this

omission may be costing firms, marketers, and the environment dearly.

Our goal in this paper is to show how humans could better preserve nature through an

improved understanding of evolved human nature. In the last few decades, evolutionary

considerations of human behavior have produced an immense amount of theoretical and

empirical insights in psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and even economics (Dunbar

and Barrett 2007; Gandolfi, Gandolfi and Barash 2002; Neuberg, Kenrick and Schaller 2010).

Evolutionary approaches are increasingly influencing applications in medicine, law, and

business (Colarelli 2003; Jones and Goldsmith 2005; Nesse and Stearns 2008; Saad

forthcoming). Consumer researchers are similarly beginning to examine how our ancestral

roots can inform modern consumer behavior (Durante et al. forthcoming; Griskevicius et al.

2009, 2010; Miller 2009; Saad and Vongas 2009; Van den Bergh, Dewitte and Warlop 2008).

Ancestral considerations suggest that many human-made modern environmental

problems are caused or exacerbated by a small set of tendencies rooted in human nature. Our

species has a long history of creating ecological problems, meaning that sustainability is not

going to come easily. Lamentably, because most communication strategies designed to

promote sustainable behaviors have ignored important aspects of human nature, such

strategies are often sub-optimal. However, by considering how and why deep ancestral forces

continue to shape modern behaviors that impact the environment, we propose that human

nature can be harnessed to craft more optimal influence strategies to lessen resource

depletion, restrain wasteful consumption, and spur sustainable behaviors.

The current paper is conceptual, not empirical. Marketing journals and consumer

scholars have recently emphasized the importance of conceptual papers, urging for more such

papers in our field (Deighton, MacInnis, McGill and Shiv 2010; Yadav 2010). The current

5

paper does not intend to present new data or to review exhaustively a specific area of work.

Instead, this paper is motivated by two practical marketing questions: (1) What advice do

marketers have for effective persuasion strategies to lessen resource depletion, restrain

wasteful consumption, and spur sustainable behaviors?; and (2) What advice do marketers

have for avoiding costly mistakes when crafting such messages? We present a framework

that helps answer these questions and contributes novel theoretical insights by focusing

specifically on the ancestral nature of human nature. We offer numerous practical suggestions

and cautionary examples, while also highlighting many fruitful directions for future consumer

research investigating sustainability, overconsumption, and pro-environmental behavior.

This paper contains three sections. First, we provide a short introduction to

evolutionary approaches to consumption and conservation. Second, we present the primary

reasons why human nature contributes to causing many environmental problems. In this

section we highlight widespread marketing mistakes that ignore human nature and can lead

efforts to change environmental practices to be unsuccessful. Third, by considering theories

designed to explain the roots of our ancestral tendencies, we demonstrate how a better

understanding of human nature could be harnessed to develop more optimal communication

strategies to spur pro-environmental behaviors such as curbing resource depletion, lessening

excessive consumption, and promoting sustainability.

AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO CONSUMPTION AND CONSERVATION

“Humans are living fossils—collections of mechanisms produced by prior selection pressures

operating on a long and unbroken line of ancestors.”

—David Buss (1995, p. 10)

A modern evolutionary approach to behavior is based on the seminal work of Charles

Darwin (1859; 1871). This approach suggests that, just as the forces of natural selection can

6

shape morphological features, those forces shape psychological and behavioral tendencies.

An evolutionary approach maintains that human and non-human animals inherit brains and

bodies equipped to behave in ways that are adaptive—that are fitted to the demands of the

environments within which their ancestors evolved. Just as human morphological features—

opposable thumbs, larynxes, and upright postures—have been shaped by evolutionary

pressures, humans inherited brains specially designed to solve critical recurrent problems in

the ancestral world (Buss 1995; Kenrick et al. 2010; Tooby and Cosmides 1992). For

example, along with the larynx, humans also inherited a brain designed to easily learn to

communicate using language. Although the specific words and sounds of a language may

differ across cultures, all languages share an underlying universal structure as a result of

evolved human mechanisms for language (Pinker 1994). Below we review two key

distinguishing features of a modern evolutionary approach to consumer behavior.

I: Distinguishing Proximate and Ultimate Levels of Explanation

An evolutionary approach asks the following question about a behavior: What could

be its adaptive or ultimate function(s)? That is, how might it have helped our ancestors

survive, reproduce, or solve another critical recurrent problem? This approach focuses on a

particular type of “why” question. When asking why children prefer donuts to spinach, one

type of answer is that donuts taste better and produce more pleasure than spinach. An

evolutionary approach, however, would also ask why sweetened, fatty foods taste good and

produce more pleasure than spinach in the first place. In this case, the reason is because

humans have inherited a tendency to prefer fatty and sweet foods. These kinds of foods, such

as meat and ripe fruit, provided our ancestors with much-needed calories in a food-scarce

environment, and did so more effectively than foods low in fat or sugar (e.g., roots, leaves, or

unripe fruit). In the modern world of supermarkets and convenience stores, although we

7

know that we should resist Ben & Jerry’s latest combination of ice cream, brownies, and

cookies, our evolved mechanisms continue to signal to us the adaptive benefits of fatty and

sweet foods. This evolutionary explanation for food preferences is known as an ultimate

explanation or cause.

An evolutionary perspective draws an important distinction between proximate and

ultimate explanations for behavior (Tinbergen 1963). Behavioral researchers have typically

been concerned with proximate explanations, which focus on relatively immediate triggers

for behavior. When asking why individuals across cultures prioritize personal convenience

over public welfare, proximate explanations include factors such as learning, utility,

happiness, attitudes, values, emotions, framing, and personality. Although proximate

explanations are critical, an evolutionary perspective urges that it can be equally pertinent to

understand the ultimate, evolutionary reason(s) why humans come equipped with a

psychology that leads them to prioritize personal convenience over public welfare.

Proximate and ultimate explanations are not competitors; they are complementary

perspectives. It is misguided to ask whether a man bought an expensive luxury car because it

makes him feel good (a proximate reason) or because this car enhances his reproductive

opportunities by conveying his status (an ultimate reason). Both of these explanations can be

correct simultaneously, whereby each one explains the same behavior at a different level of

analysis. The important point is that neglecting ultimate reasons for behavior can lead to

misguided and sub-optimal marketing communication strategies. For example, if marketers

desired to curb purchases of pricy luxury cars, ignoring ultimate reasons might lead to a

strategy that tries to persuade people that luxury cars shouldn’t make them feel good. This

kind of a strategy is likely to be fighting an uphill battle, in the same way that it is difficult to

curb overeating by trying to persuade people that donuts and ice cream shouldn’t taste good.

8

An evolutionary approach does not presume that people will always be conscious of

the ultimate reasons for their behavior. A large literature shows that such motives often guide

behaviors in an automatic, non-conscious manner (Barrett and Kurzban 2006; Kenrick et al.

2010). Because people have both proximate and ultimate motives, this perspective highlights

that people usually have multiple motives for a given behavior. For example, when buying a

green product, this act can be driven by altruistic motives at the proximate level (e.g., “I want

to be nice and help the environment”), but be driven by non-conscious selfish motives at the

ultimate level (e.g., being nice helps my reproductive fitness by enhancing my reputation).

While our genes are selfish at the ultimate level, selfish genes can—and do—build organisms

that are capable of behaving in ways that are kind, charitable, and sustainable (Dawkins 1976).

II: The Mind Evolved to Solve Adaptive Challenges

An evolutionary approach does not assume that humans or other organisms inherit the

capacity to determine in advance which behaviors will enhance their reproductive fitness.

People do not proceed through life as fitness-maximizing machines, consciously considering

how each decision increases their survival or reproductive chances. Instead, natural selection

endows humans and other organisms with mental mechanisms designed to increase the

probability of solving recurrent adaptive challenges confronted during the ancestral past.

Converging evidence suggests that our minds are adapted to life in small hunter-

gatherer bands of around 100-150 individuals that roamed around the African Savannah for

hundreds of thousands of years before moving out of Africa (Dunbar and Barrett 2007; Foley

1997). Our “Stone Age” ancestors needed to solve important recurring problems, such as

acquiring food and water, protecting against predators, gaining status, attracting mates, caring

for children, and maintaining group unity (Kenrick et al. 2010). Individuals who were

disposed to behave in ways that were successful at solving such critical problems became our

9

ancestors, while the others died out. An evolutionary perspective thus posits that our brains

have inherited a suite of mechanisms and tendencies that consistently helped produce

behaviors to solve recurrent adaptive problems in ancestral environments.

As one example of an ancestral tendency, consider the well-documented mental

mechanism for solving the ancestral challenge of protecting ourselves from predation

(Öhman and Mineka 2001). Although it is possible to teach people to fear almost anything

with enough conditioning trials, the human mind comes “prepared” to swiftly and effortlessly

learn to fear—often with a single trial—specific types of objects that posed harm in ancestral

environments. It is much easier to condition human infants and adults to fear objects that

resemble snakes or spiders—objects that posed a significant threat throughout our

evolutionary past—than to electrical outlets or automobiles—objects that cause many more

deaths in current-day environments, but which did not exist in our evolutionary past. Thus,

our human nature predisposes us with a tendency to learn fears towards stimuli that posed

threats to our ancestors (Domjan 2005).

An evolutionary perspective yields important implications for understanding human

behavior. Foremost, it suggests that the human mind is not a blank slate (Pinker 2002); a

blank slate perspective suggests that preferences, desires, and behaviors are determined solely

by exposure to culture. This perspective implies that marketers are equally capable in

persuading people to behave in one way as well as in the exact opposite way. According to

this view, advertising campaigns are equally capable in teaching people to be selfish or

selfless, value the future or the present, aspire to high or low status, imitate or not imitate

others, or any other combination. Although blank slate approaches emphasizing a lack of

human nature might seem outdated to some modern readers, it is important to realize that

such approaches dominated social science research throughout the 20th century, and continue

to be prevalent across the behavioral sciences (Tooby and Cosmides 1992; Pinker 2002).

10

Conversely, an evolutionary perspective maintains that there is a human nature—that

humans have a set of tendencies reflecting adaptive psychologies that helped solve recurring

challenges in our ancestral past. Accordingly, instead of preferences and desires being

infinitely malleable, there are human universals (Brown 1991). People are disposed to care

more about some things than others and to learn some things easier than others. The existence

of a human nature does not mean that our behavior is genetically fixed. Indeed, behavior is

highly responsive to environmental contingencies. However, by considering how and why

evolutionary forces continue to shape modern consumer behaviors, an evolutionary approach

suggests that not all environmental contingencies are created equal. Whereas some types of

contingencies used in hopes of motivating sustainability are doomed to fight an uphill battle

against human nature, others can swiftly and effortlessly spur environmental action.

WHY HUMAN NATURE PRODUCES ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

“Sustainability is an admirable goal but our policies need to be sustainable themselves, and

therefore we need policies that are compatible with human nature.”

—Penn and Mysterud (2007, p. 2)

There is a popular belief that humans are naturally inclined to show restraint in using

environmental resources, and that bad environmental practice is a product of modern,

wasteful Western culture. Although this idea of an ecological “noble savage,” which dates

back to the writings of 18th century French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, continues to

persist, it turns out that traditional societies are not the conservationists they were once

thought to be (Smith and Wishnie 2000). While many traditional societies hold beliefs about

the sacredness of nature, there is no association between holding such beliefs and having a

low ecological impact (Low 1996). Most evidence suggests that the low ecological impact of

many traditional societies has more to do with low population densities and lack of

11

technology than with conservation ethics. Our ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers,

continuously moving their camp to new locations when resources in current locales became

exhausted. Our nomadic past suggests that human nature has been shaped to extract and

consume resources from the environment, rather than to preserve and conserve them. Indeed,

rather than once being noble savages, our species has a long history of causing ecological

destruction (Diamond 2005; Penn 2003).

Why do humans cause environmental problems, and what aspects of our innate human

nature may contribute to environmental destruction? We propose that a large proportion of

human-inflicted ecological damage is caused or exacerbated by five ancestral tendencies (see

Table 1). These tendencies were adaptive in the ancestral environment, but they can have

devastating ecological consequences in the modern world—in the same way that our adaptive

tendency for craving sweet and fatty foods can lead to obesity in the modern world of caloric

abundance. The tendencies we present are not mutually exclusive. The most ecologically

damaging behaviors often involve a combination of several tendencies. But a better

understanding of each tendency can help marketers avoid costly and widely prevalent

communication mistakes. Although an evolutionary perspective is not necessary to identify

and document most of these tendencies, the value of an evolutionary perspective comes in

using appropriate theories to identify the ancestral roots of why these tendencies exist. As we

discuss later, a deeper understanding of ultimate reasons provides a powerful lever for

harnessing human nature to effectively promote sustainable behavior.

--------------------------------- Insert Table 1 about here

---------------------------------

I: Valuing Self-Interest Over the Common Good

Many environmental problems result from a conflict between personal and collective

interests, whereby narrow self-interests often prevail against the common good of the group.

12

This tension is famously captured by the Tragedy of the Commons metaphor (Hardin 1968),

in which a small pasture is shared by multiple herders. Although the herders all desire that

everyone’s grazing be limited, each herder quickly realizes that if he adds just a little extra

cattle to the pasture, he receives a net personal benefit while the costs are shared among all

herdsmen. Corroborated by evidence from multiple fields, the result is an unintended tragedy:

Most individuals increase their grazing, thereby unintentionally causing the destruction of the

commons (Dawes 1980; Dietz, Ostrom and Stern 2003).

The cause of this often-repeated tragedy is rooted in human nature. Humans are

predisposed to prioritize personal over collective interests because natural selection favors

individuals who can receive a personal benefit at others’ expense (Hawkes 1992). Natural

selection does not care about the survival of the species. What matters is the replication of

one’s genes, which often comes at the expense of the survival of others’ genes (Dawkins

1976). Accordingly, when faced with social dilemmas, most individuals make selfish choices,

especially when interacting with strangers in large groups (Komorita and Parks 1994).

A key indicator that the human mind has been shaped to be wary of contributing to

public goods comes from evidence that humans possess specific psychological mechanisms

to detect cheaters (Cosmides 1989; Sugiyama et al. 2002). The presences of such specialized

mechanisms suggests that our ancestors’ social environment was riddled with the threat of

free-riders—individuals who attempt to profit from a common good without paying their fair

share. Although there are individual differences in people’s tendency to exploit others (Van

Lange et al. 1997), evolutionary considerations highlight that it is human nature to be tempted

by—and occasionally act on—opportunities to benefit oneself at the expense of others.

Marketing Mistakes. Because environmental proponents often do not recognize that

humans are disposed to value their self-interest more than the public good (Penn 2003), this

has resulted in the perpetuation of ineffective pro-environmental persuasion strategies

13

(Gardner and Stern 2002). Communication tactics that try to urge people to value the group

above oneself are fighting an uphill battle. Similarly, trying to persuade people to engage in

self-restraint purely for environmental reasons is also unlikely to work. Even if such

strategies might appear to work at the outset, voluntary restraint is likely to be only a

temporary solution because of the free-rider problem, whereby the mere possibility of free-

riders breeds paranoia and temptation (Van Vugt 2009). For instance, a campaign urging

people to use restraint in water consumption actually increased water use because people

feared that others would be unwilling to restrain themselves (Van Vugt 2001). An

evolutionary perspective suggests that strategies aimed at eradicating people’s ancestral

tendencies are doomed—or at best, sub-optimal. Instead, as we discuss later, such biases can

and should be harnessed and redirected to promote sustainable behaviors.

II: Valuing Relative Status Over Absolute Status

Many environmental problems result from a conflict between having enough

resources versus wanting to have more than others. Excessive consumption, especially of

extravagant, showy goods that have no immediate survival value, contributes significantly to

the depletion of natural resources, pollution, and waste (Frank 2007). This desire to “keep up

with the Joneses” is often presented as an invention of modern, Western culture. Thorstein

Veblen’s classic treatise on Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) is widely regarded as a

critique of frivolous consumer behavior in capitalistic society. Yet Veblen himself observed

that conspicuous consumption had occurred throughout human history (Sundie et al.

forthcoming). Egyptian pharaohs displayed their wealth with golden thrones, elaborate

artworks, and giant pyramids, and Indian maharajahs built extravagant and ostentatious villas

while keeping collections of rare and exotic animals on their expansive estates. Such showy

displays of wealth have been documented in cultures as diverse as feudal Europe and Japan,

14

among Polynesian Islanders, Icelandic communities, Amazonian foraging tribes, and

Melanesian people of Australia (Bird and Smith 2005; Godoy et al. 2007).

An evolutionary analysis suggests that wasteful consumption is rooted in people’s

innate desire for status that improves reproductive opportunities (Miller 2009; Saad 2007).

Because success in evolution is always relative (a gene must do better than alternative alleles

to spread), an evolutionary perspective highlights that individuals will generally be more

concerned with relative status rather than absolute status. Consider the following two options:

Would you rather have (A) a 4,000-square-foot home in a neighborhood of 6,000-square-foot

homes, or (B) a 3,000-square-foot home in a neighborhood of 2,000-square-foot homes.

When presented with these types of options, the majority of people across cultures and

demographic categories choose option B (Frank 1985). People are willing to have less

overall, as long as they have more than their neighbors. Indeed, an increase in relative wealth

makes people happier than their absolute wealth (Diener and Suh 2000). Although people

differ in their status-sensitivity, an evolutionary perspective highlights that it is universal

human nature to be tempted by and often act upon desires to improve one’s relative status.

Marketing Mistakes. Strategies for reducing consumption that fail to consider the

importance of relative status are unlikely to be very effective. For instance, it is misguided to

blame the media for creating a thirst for status. Rather than being the root of the problem,

marketers are merely exploiting people’s innate desires. An evolutionary perspective suggests

that it will be difficult to persuade people to be content with their current status or behave in

ways that lowers their status. Imploring Westerners to consume less because they are

wealthier than most people in the rest of the world is likely to do little to slow consumption.

Rather than trying to eradicate the drive for status, more optimal strategies can and should

harness and redirect such tendencies to produce pro-environmental rather than wasteful

behavior.

15

III: Copying the Behavior of Others

An often underappreciated contributor to environmental problems results from a

conflict between what people believe they ought to do versus what they actually see others

doing (Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren 1990). A recent report by Environics Research Group

showed that the overwhelming majority of Americans have the highest level of enthusiasm

for being “green” and energy efficient. Yet when probed about actual behaviors, only 9% of

people had purchased a green product, only 7% had been turning off unneeded lights or

appliances, and just 6% had curbed water consumption. An important reason why people

don’t behave pro-environmentally is because they observe others behaving in a non-

environmental manner.

Psychologists have long recognized that humans exhibit a tendency to copy others

(Asch 1956). This tendency is believed to have evolutionary benefits (Simon 1990; Sundie et

al. 2006). Imitating others and following the majority are adaptive strategies for learning in

social species such as ours, in which the costs of individual trial-and-error learning are

substantial (Gigerenzer and Todd 1999; Richerson and Boyd 2006). In ancestral

environments, individuals who swiftly followed what others were doing had an adaptive

advantage, especially in uncertain situations (Cialdini and Goldstein 2004; Kameda et al

2003). Mimicry research similarly suggests that imitating others is often an automatic

process, triggered by mirror neurons in the brain (Chartrand and Van Baaren 2009).

The human tendency to imitate has important consequences for the environment. For

example, although home residents say that the behavior of their neighbors has the least effect

on their own conservation behaviors, the behavior of neighbors is by far the strongest

predictor of actual energy conservation, including being a substantially stronger motivator

than environmental attitudes or financial incentives (Nolan et al. 2008). And when people

16

learn that their neighbors are not conserving, they increase their own energy consumption,

even when they had been conserving energy in the past (Schultz et al. 2007).

Marketing Mistakes. Communication strategies urging people that they “should”

behave environmentally are likely to be sub-optimal, especially if people are not convinced

that many others are behaving in this manner. Paradoxically, a common approach to spur

environmental behaviors is to depict a problem as regrettably frequent. Messages such as

“83% of people are not recycling!” or “100 million plastic bottles discarded everyday!” are

well-intended, but the communicators have missed something critically important: Within the

statement “Look at all the people who are doing this undesirable thing” lurks the powerful

and undercutting message “Look at all the people who are doing it.” For example, a sign at

the Petrified National Forest in Arizona attempts to prevent theft of petrified wood by

informing visitors about the regrettably high number of thefts each year. Field experiments

show that this sign increases theft by almost three hundred percent (Cialdini 2003). As we

discuss later, rather than trying to get people to stop paying attention to what others are doing,

there are more optimal ways to harness the human tendency to imitate the masses.

IV: Valuing the Present Over the Future

Many environmental problems result from a tradeoff between immediate versus

delayed rewards, whereby today’s desires often prevail against tomorrow’s needs. This

proclivity to discount the future is sometimes assumed to be a pathology of Western

civilization (Penn 2003). Yet this tendency had enormous benefits in ancestral environments

(Wilson and Daly 2005). If our ancestors would have spent too much effort on future needs

rather than on satisfying immediate needs, they would have been less likely to survive and

pass on their genes (Kacelnik 1997). Indeed, neuroscientific evidence shows that the salience

of immediate rewards activates evolutionary ancient brain systems (McClure et al. 2004).

17

Natural selection is not forward-looking. It does not anticipate what might happen in

future generations. Instead, natural selection has shaped our psychology to maximize the here

and now. The evolutionarily-recent transition from being hunters-gatherers to farmers some

13,000 years ago had important consequences for temporal discounting. Whereas hunter-

gatherers’ labor is often rewarded the same day, farmers need to wait several months until

harvest. When our ancestors shifted from foraging to food production, their evolved

preferences were not eradicated. Although there are individual differences in the ability to

delay gratification, people in modern societies still overwhelmingly weigh immediate

outcomes more heavily than distant ones (e.g., Frederick, Loewenstein and O'Donoghue

2002; Green and Myerson 2004), while underestimating the probability and severity of future

outcomes, such as ecological threats (Hardin 1995; Slovic et al. 1987).

Marketing Mistakes. Because humans value the present over the future and ignore

distant, low-probability events, strategies that fail to take these predispositions into account

are not likely to succeed. Calls for people to value the needs of future generations as much as

their own needs are unrealistic. Field studies show that appeals to consider the consequences

of wasteful behavior on future generations are ineffective at motivating environmental

behavior (Gardner and Stern 2002; Goldstein and Cialdini 2007). Nevertheless, although zero

discounting is unrealistic, an evolutionary analysis suggests that specific types of tactics can

lead people to place more weight on the future when making environmental decisions.

V: Mismatches Between Modern and Ancestral Environments

An evolutionary perspective suggests that we interact with our complex present-day

world using brains that evolved to confront the problems of the Pleistocene (Ornstein and

Ehrlich 1989). Because our “Stone Age” brains are designed to produce adaptive behaviors in

the ancestral environment, this does not imply that they will produce adaptive behaviors

18

today. For example, our evolved, adaptive desire for sex can produce outcomes in our

modern world with little to no adaptive evolutionary benefits, such as pornography. The

mismatch between what our brains were designed to do and understand versus what we

confront and try to comprehend in the modern world can exacerbate environmental problems.

Social scientists have long been puzzled as to why people are so poor at rational

decision making, comprehending environmental risks, and underestimating the severity of

environmental issues (Hardin 1993; Slovic 1987). An evolutionary perspective suggests that

such judgments may reflect a deeper ecological rationality, meaning that the human mind is

optimized to solve problems the way they presented themselves in the ancestral environment

(Haselton and Nettle 2006; Pham 2007). Indeed, human decision-making improves

dramatically when problems are presented in a natural ecological context (Gigerenzer 2000).

Consider that statistical information in the modern world is often presented in

probabilistic terms, such as “there is a 0.2 probability that it will rain today.” Our ancestors,

however, would have encountered information in frequentist terms—“it rained on 4 out of the

last 20 days.” When a classic rational decision problem, such as Casscells’ (1978) medical

diagnosis problem, is presented in probabilistic terms, it is solved only by about 12% of

people, including trained physicians. Yet when the same exact problem is presented in

frequentist terms, it is solved accurately by everyone between 76% and 92% of the time

(Cosmides and Tooby 1996). Rather than error-prone decision-makers, people are excellent

intuitive statisticians as long as information is presented in an ecologically relevant way.

Marketing Mistakes. Humans will be slower to respond to threats that are

evolutionary novel, such as global warming, air pollution, or toxic waste. Given that the mind

has evolved to respond to information in the way it would have appeared in ancestral

environments, people will also be less likely to respond to environmental risks stated in

probabilistic than in frequentist terms. Similarly, because humans evolved in relatively small

19

and simple societies, we are not adept at comprehending large numbers. While a million,

billion, and trillion represent vastly different quantities, such concepts did not exist in the

ancestral environment. Finally, our ancestors’ ecological challenges were relatively local and

had a visible link between activities and the state of the environment. This suggests that

people are unlikely to be responsive to environmental threats that they cannot feel, hear,

smell, touch, or see.

HARNESSING HUMAN NATURE TO SOLVE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

“The only way to make a conservation ethic work is to ground it in ultimately selfish

reasoning… An essential component of this formula is the principle that people will conserve

fiercely if they foresee a material gain for themselves, their kin, and their tribe.”

—E. O. Wilson (1984, p. 131-132)

An evolutionary perspective highlights the reasons why and how human nature

contributes to many environmental problems. But it does not imply that such problems are

inevitable. By understanding the ancestral origins and workings of our innate tendencies, an

evolutionary approach suggests that environmental problems could be lessened or even

eradicated by employing evolutionarily-informed communication strategies. For persuasion

strategies to be optimally effective, however, they must work with—rather than ignore—our

ancestral tendencies.

In this final section we revisit the tendencies why human nature produces or

exacerbates many environmental problems. Here we explicitly draw on the theories that point

to the origins of these tendencies (see Table 1), which provide valuable insight into the levers

and pulleys marketers can use to effectively influence behavior. We propose that each

tendency can be harnessed and redirected to mitigate a variety of environmental problems

from the depletion of natural resources to excessive consumption. As reviewed below,

20

insights from evolutionary considerations are not only already proving to be effective at

changing environmental practices, but they offer many directions for future research on

consumer sustainability and conservation.

I. Harnessing Self-Interest

Kin Selection and Psychological Kinship. An evolutionary perspective highlights that

self-interest does not equate to the interest of an individual. The theory of kin selection (or

inclusive fitness theory) asserts that people have been designed to ensure the survival and

replication of their genes—genes that are shared with kin (Hamilton 1964). Kin selection has

important implications for cooperation in environmental social dilemmas. Consider a group

of siblings confronting a tragedy of the commons. Because siblings share roughly 50% of

their genes with each other, they have a shared interest in preserving the commons (Kenrick,

Sundie and Kurzban 2008). Indeed, across cultures (and species) individuals are more likely

to share resources with kin than non-kin, and with close kin more than distant kin (Burnstein,

Crandall and Kitayama, 1994; Dunbar and Barrett 2007).

Kin selection has implications for future research. Pro-environmental appeals may be

more influential when they emphasize the interests of kin. A message urging people to

conserve water may be more effective if it emphasizes that there might not be enough water

left for one’s children, nephews, nieces, cousins—one’s “genetic future.” Another implication

is that the use of fictitious kin labels may foster sustainable behavior. Messages emphasizing

that groups are like families might elicit greater self-sacrifice by activating a psychological

sense of kinship. Appeals such as “Mother Nature needs our help” or “Brother, can you spare

a dime for the environment?” might be more powerful at eliciting environmental care.

Reciprocity and Social Networks. Because humans also cooperate with non-kin,

evolutionary theorists have explained such cooperation in light of the theory of reciprocal

21

altruism (Trivers 1971). Because helpers can benefit by being helped in return, reciprocal

altruism explains why people may cooperate with non-kin in commons dilemmas. Conditions

in human ancestral groups were well-suited for the evolution of reciprocal altruism because

hunter-gatherer groups formed small and stable social networks (Foley 1997). Research

shows that modern small communities with dense social networks – much like those found in

hunter-gatherer bands – are better at preserving communal resources (Ostrom 1990). For

instance, fishery communities with stronger networks have more sustainable fishing practices

(Palmer 1991), and dense community networks speed up the adoption of green technologies

via word-of-mouth (Gardner and Stern 2002). Reciprocal altruism suggests that pro-

environmental behavior among non-kin could be fostered more easily through the creation of

small and interdependent social networks. Although modern cities inhabited by millions of

anonymous strangers are very different from the world of our ancestors, future research is

poised to examine how online social network sites such as Facebook or Twitter can be used

to turn large, anonymous masses into small, virtual communities.

Because humans are capable of cooperating with those who cannot directly return

favors, the evolution of this kind of helping is explained in light of theories of indirect

reciprocity (Nowak and Sigmund 2005). Indirect reciprocity posits that organisms can evolve

the ability to cooperate with non-reciprocating strangers because doing so can establish a

reputation as a good cooperator. People with cooperative and conservationist reputations are

more often selected as allies and even group leaders (Hardy and Van Vugt 2006). People are

not only less likely to deplete resources when their reputation is at stake (Milinski et al.

2006), but reputational concerns can be a powerful motivator in leading individuals to

sacrifice personal benefits in order to adopt pro-environmental practices (Griskevicius,

Tybur, and Van den Bergh 2010). Reputation is also a powerful tool for inducing businesses

to adopt sustainable practices. For example, a consumer-led “name and shame” campaign

22

forced McDonalds to abandon plastic packaging in favor of more sustainable materials

(Gardner and Stern 2002). Research shows that simply having a pair of eyes on a poster can

activate reputation concerns and decrease free-riding (Bateson et al. 2006), suggesting that

signs, stickers, or even computer monitor backgrounds with eyes might encourage pro-

environmental behavior.

Fostering Group Identity. Evolutionary analyses point to an additional factor that

should motivate people to self-sacrifice in large-scale environmental dilemmas. Because

human evolutionary history is riddled with competitions and battles between tribes, people

have an innate capacity to quickly form strong emotional ties with groups (Richerson and

Boyd 2006; Wilson et al. 2008). This “tribal instinct” is reflected in people’s social identity

with various groups (Tajfel and Turner 1979). The strength of people’s community

identification predicts their willingness to help solve tragedy of the commons problems (Van

Vugt 2001). High community identifiers are more willing to punish cheaters and compensate

for undesirable behavior of other community members (Brewer and Kramer 1986). Recent

neuroscience findings suggest that similar brain regions are activated when helping kin as

when helping strangers with whom one strongly identifies (Harbaugh, Mayr and Burghart

2007), suggesting that we can perceive members of our community as kin. Future research

needs to examine how the creation of community identities can be used to promote

sustainable behavior. For example, a superordinate identity can be strengthened by

emphasizing a common threat, such as the collapse of the local tourist economy when a

shared resource such as a rain forest or fishing lake is being destroyed (Van Vugt 2009).

II: Harnessing Desire for Relative Status

Costly Signaling. Evolutionary theorists regard conspicuous consumption as a costly

signal of status (Bird and Smith 2005; Miller 2009). Costly signaling theory posits that

23

natural selection encourages people to engage in activities that are increasingly costly –

involving significant resources, energy, risk, or time – as a way of signaling their ability to

incur costs, which is associated with status. People who buy second homes, for example,

effectively convey to their peers that they can incur the cost of spending large sums of money

on non-essential goods, thereby increasing their relative status (Van Vugt and Hardy 2010).

Because costly behaviors are intended to signal the ability to incur costs, competitions

for relative status should not be limited to consumption. For example, someone like media

mogul Ted Turner can signal his ability to incur costs by building a fifth mansion or by

donating the same million dollars to pro-environmental causes. People who are wealthy and

helpful are not only seen as more trustworthy, and as more desirable as friends and romantic

partners (Barclay 2004; Cottrell, Neuberg and Li 2007; Griskevicius et al. 2007; Iredale, Van

Vugt and Dunbar 2008), but they are more likely to increase their status in the eyes of others

(Hardy and Van Vugt 2006). Indeed, individuals throughout history are known to compete

for status via helping—a concept known as competitive altruism (Roberts 1998; Van Vugt et

al. 2007). For example, in the Native American Kwakiutl practice of potlatching, tribal chiefs

compete to give away their possessions, whereby the person who is able to give away the

most resources gains status (Cole and Chaikin 1990). Anthropologists have observed such

behaviors in numerous hunter-gatherer societies, including the Ache of Paraguay, the Meriam

of Australia, and the Shuar of the Amazon (Price 2003; Smith and Bird 2000).

Competitive Environmentalism. People’s desire for relative status can be harnessed

and redirected for status competition via pro-environmental behaviors. Because status desires

can motivate people to invest in a good reputation, it can encourage them to purchase socially

desirable green products rather than non-green counterparts (Griskevicius et al. 2010). As

highlighted earlier, a key component of harnessing status to benefit the environment is that

pro-environmental acts need to be visible to others (Hardy and Van Vugt 2006). Green

24

organizations are well-advised to give their benefactors visible signs, tags, or badges, so that

benefactors can clearly display their self-sacrificing green acts. Another type of strategy

could involve publicizing a “Green List” that ranks the top greenest companies, celebrities, or

ordinary citizens. Media mogul Ted Turner, for example, once bemoaned the influence of the

Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, pointing out that this publicized list discourages the

wealthy from donating to charity for fear of slipping down in the rankings. Perhaps it was not

a coincidence that a list of top philanthropist—the Slate 60—was established the very same

year that Ted Turner publicly pledged a billion dollars to humanitarian relief. Similar types of

publicized lists of “least polluting companies” in India have been remarkably effective at

motivating firms to voluntarily reduce pollution (Powers, Blackman, Lyon and Narain 2008),

highlighting the universal human tendency to not want to be at the bottom of any totem pole.

A competitive environmentalism approach has important implications for the pricing

of green products. This perspective suggests that increasing the price of a green product

might lead that product to be more desirable because it signals that people are prepared to

incur costs. For example, after U.S. tax credits for the Toyota Prius expired, sales went up by

68.9% (Toyota Reports 2008). When green products are relatively cheaper than their

counterparts, this can decrease their desirability (Griskevicius et al. 2010). A counterintuitive

implication of costly signalling is that making some green products cheaper, easier to buy,

and more time-saving might undercut their utility as a signal of environmentalist dedication.

Electric cars might be seen as more prestigious and desirable if recharging stations are harder

to find and batteries take longer to recharge. Future research is needed to examine whether it

might be detrimental to have high-status celebrities market green products that are

inexpensive because purchasing such cheap products can undermine the signaling of relative

status. Future research is also needed to investigate conditions when it is optimal for green

25

products to have large premiums and be linked to high-status celebrities, compared to

providing consumers with rebates and financial incentives to acquire green wares.

III: Harnessing Imitation and Obligation

There are two types of appeals commonly used in hopes of persuading people to go

green. One involves informing people about the plight of the environment, and the other

involves appealing to monetary benefits. For example, most hotels place cards in rooms

urging guests to reuse their towels by appealing to the environment (e.g., “The environment

needs our help!”) or to money (e.g., “Please reuse towels to help keep your costs low”).

Although such messages may intuitively seem persuasive, field experiments show that either

type of message is no more effective than simply asking people to “Please reuse your towels”

(Goldstein et al. 2008). Much research demonstrates that merely informing people about the

plight of the environment does little to motivate pro-environmental behavior (Gardner and

Stern 2002). And while financial incentives can motivate conservation, such incentives need

to be substantial (e.g., a $5 hotel discount for reusing towels), making such programs

prohibitively expensive. Moreover, financial incentives may crowd out any intrinsic

motivation to do good for the environment (Tenbrunsel and Messick 1999).

Imitation and Social Norms. Drawing on the ultimate theory of cultural evolution

(Boyd and Richerson 2005) and proximate mechanism of social norms (Cialdini et al. 1990),

the tendency to imitate others can be harnessed to spur pro-environmental behavior. For

example, hotel cards imploring guests to reuse towels could indicate the prevalence of this

behavior. Compared to standard messages, when guests are merely informed of the true fact

that the majority of other guests reuse their towels at least once during a stay, towel reuse

goes up by 34% (Goldstein et al. 2008). Our innate tendency to copy others has been used

26

with great success to increase recycling (Schultz 1999), reduce littering (Cialdini et al. 1990),

and decrease home energy use (Nolan et al. 2008).

Future research needs to examine how the tendency to imitate can be used to promote

pro-environmental behavior even when the majority of people are not engaging in such acts.

For example, what happens when only 5% of commuters carpool to work? Consideration of

human nature suggests that re-framing such information from relative terms to absolute

numbers (e.g., 25,000 city residents carpool each week!) may harness our tendency to copy

others and motivate sustainable behavior. Equally problematic is people’s tendency to copy

behavior regardless of whether it helps or hurts the environment. When residents learn that

they are using less energy than their neighbors, for example, they increase energy

consumption (Schultz et al. 2007). Fortunately, this detrimental effect can be reversed by

providing residents who already conserve energy with positive social feedback (Schultz et al.,

2007). When residents are informed that they are using less energy than their neighbors and

they receive a smiley face to indicate social approval for this behavior, such information

motivates conservationists to continue their energy-efficient ways.

An American utility company named Opower provides a case study of how the

tendency to imitate can be harnessed to foster large-scale behavioral change (Cuddy and

Doherty 2010). Directly applying the research reviewed above, Opower provides home

residents with information on their monthly energy bill regarding how much energy they are

using compared to their neighbors, including drawing a smiley face on the bills of those

residents who are energy-efficient. Despite reaching only a small percentage of homes, in

2009 Opower saved more energy than the entire U.S. solar energy industry produced; and by

end of 2010, the amount of energy use reduced by Opower will be equivalent to removing

150,000 homes from the electricity grid. This approach is not only inexpensive to implement,

but it has been effective at reducing energy consumption across demographic categories. The

27

program also continues to be effective more than two years after initial implementation. This

harnessing of human nature to promote sustainable behavior has been so effective that U.S.

President Barak Obama recently held a public press conference at Opower’s headquarters,

heralding this marketing approach as the model for creating sustainable lifestyles.

Imitation and Reciprocal Altruism. An increasingly popular strategy to foster

sustainability consists of offering donations to green causes in return for the purchase of

products or services—a strategy falling under the rubric of cause-related marketing

(Varadarajan and Menon 1988). For instance, for every Samsung Reclaim phone purchased,

Samsung donated $2 to the Nature Conservancy. Cause-related marketing is believed to be so

effective that it is the fastest-growing arena of corporate sponsorship (well over a billion

dollars annually), outpacing sports sponsorships (Watson 2006).

Although these kinds of tit-for-tat approaches may seem intuitively persuasive,

research shows that offering gifts such as mugs or tote bags as incentives for charitable

giving significantly decreases donations compared to when no gift is offered (Newman and

Shen 2010). More pertinent to pro-environmental behavior, in a field experiment in hotels,

messages that promised a donation to an environmental cause if guests reused their towels

were no more effective at motivating towel reuse than standard messages (Goldstein,

Griskevicius and Cialdini 2010). Although cause-related marketing can no doubt be effective

under some circumstances, a closer inspection of such tactics highlights that they fail to

harness either the human tendency to imitate or to reciprocate. In cause-related marketing the

company provides neither a behavior to imitate, nor a benefit that allows recipients to

reciprocate. Consideration of human nature suggests that a small—but theoretically crucial—

alteration to such practices should engage both imitation and reciprocal altruism: If the

company were to donate first, it would provide a behavior for consumers to imitate and a

sense of obligation to reciprocate. Indeed, a message in hotel rooms informing guests that the

28

hotel had already donated to an environmental cause increased towel reuse by 26 percent

(Goldstein, Griskevicius and Cialdini 2010). Future research is needed to investigate

circumstances when cause-related marketing approaches are more versus less successful, as

well as conditions that optimize the effectiveness of switching the order of the donation.

IV: Valuing the Present and the Future

While some discounting of the future is adaptive, an evolutionary perspective posits

that people’s discounting rates are not fixed. Evolutionary theorists note that the extent to

which people weigh the present versus the future is linked to life history theory (Kaplan and

Gangestad 2005). According to life history theory, all organisms, including humans, must

make trade-offs between investing in current versus in future reproduction. Prioritizing

current reproduction is associated with earlier sexual maturation (e.g., earlier onset of

menarche), producing more offspring, and valuing the present (Ellis 2004). In contrast,

prioritizing future reproduction is associated with delayed sexual maturation (e.g., later onset

of menarche), producing fewer offspring, and valuing the future. Considerations of life

history theory have important implications for both impatience and overpopulation—two key

contributors to environmental problems.

Safe and Predictable Environments. According to life history theory, whether

individuals prioritize the present versus the future varies in response to specific ecological

factors. When environments are dangerous or unpredictable, people invest more in current

reproduction and discount the future more steeply (Ellis et al. 2009). Mortality rates are

indeed strongly related to the age of reproduction, both across countries and city

neighborhoods (Low 1996; Wilson and Daly 1997). Even controlling for socio-economic

status, higher violent crime rates predict an earlier age of reproduction (Griskevicius et al.

forthcoming). This means that in environments that are unpredictable or dangerous, people

29

tend to have more offspring, adding to population numbers. Such environments are also

associated with steeper discounting in decision-making. For example, mortality cues lead

people to choose immediate rewards over larger, later rewards (Griskevicius et al. 2010).

Life history theory suggests that interventions to make environments be—or merely

be perceived as—safer, more stable, and predictable should produce less discounting of the

future. For example, research needs to examine whether marketing messages that highlight

the safety, stability, and predictability of the environment are more effective at increasing the

valuation of the future, possibly leading people to be more likely to act in ways to preserve

the environment for the future. Life history theory also suggests that childhood environments

are particularly important in setting psychological life-history parameters, meaning that

individuals’ discounting preferences could be altered most powerfully through early-age

interventions. For example, future research needs to examine whether child daycare centers

that emphasize predictable routines and are staffed by a small and stable set of workers might

lead those children to discount the future less steeply as adults.

Gender Differences. An evolutionary life history perspective predicts that men should

discount the future more steeply than women. This prediction is derived from the theories of

parental investment and sexual selection (Darwin 1871; Trivers 1972), which assert that the

sex in a species with lower obligatory investment in offspring (e.g., gestation, birthing,

lactation, parenting) will be more competitive. Consistent with the fact that in the vast

majority of mammals, including in humans, males have lower obligatory parental investment,

much research documents that men across cultures are more competitive, risk-taking,

aggressive, and have a shorter life expectancy than women (Daly and Wilson 1988; Kenrick

and Luce 2000). Accordingly, men, on average, have steeper discount rates than women

(Wilson, Daly and Gordon 2007). One of the implications of this gender difference is that

men are more willing to deplete environmental resources and engage in wasteful

30

consumption for present gains. This is borne out by studies showing that men are less

concerned about environmental degradation and are more willing to conspicuously waste

environmental resources to attract mates (Low 1996; Sundie et al. forthcoming; Wilson et al.,

1998, 2007).

Consideration of the ancestral roots of gender differences suggests that men’s

discount rates can be influenced by the mating ecology (Wilson and Daly 2004), such as the

ratio of men to women in a population. Sex ratios deviate markedly from equality in many

populous countries. In the most striking case, China will soon have several dozen million of

surplus males (Zhu, Lu, and Hesketh 2009). Research shows that a scarcity of women leads

men to discount the future at a steeper rate (Griskevicius et al. 2010), suggesting that male-

biased sex ratios within countries or areas may exacerbate environmental problems.

A life history perspective presents some reasons for optimism about male

environmental behavior. For example, men’s preferences shift toward less impulsivity and

more restraint when they perceive that there is less competition for mates (Griskevicius et al.

2010). Further, the theory of sexual selection suggests that an important contributor to how

men treat the environment is the mate preferences of women. Recent research shows that

women find men who behave sustainably sexually more attractive (Gotts and Van Vugt

2010). This implies that a potentially powerful lever in shaping men’s environmental

behavior is information that informs men regarding what modern women want.

V: Presenting Information to Match Ancestral Mechanisms

Our minds evolved in an ancestral world where there was a tangible link between

behavior and the environment. If group members hunted all of the game and gathered all of

the food in an area, they became hungry; if they defecated in their cave, it became

uninhabitable; and if they ate something poisonous, they got sick and possibly died. A critical

31

difference between the modern world and our ancestral environment is that today we rarely

see, feel, touch, hear, or smell how our behaviors impact the environment. When we buy

food, we don’t see how it is grown; if we buy all of the food at the store, more will arrive

tomorrow; when we purchase a manufactured product, we don’t see the factory by the river

that might be poisoning the water downstream.

Tangible and Visceral Stimuli. Effective marketing communications must harness our

evolved tendencies to respond to tangible and visceral stimuli. Consider an instructive

example from the gas company. How do you know if your home is filling up with poisonous

gas? You know because your house begins to smell funny. Of course, natural gas has no

odor, so gas companies intentionally scent gas with a noxious smell to ensure that people feel

that they are being poisoned, which motivates them to take immediate action. Now consider a

related question: How do you know if your environment is being poisoned? Almost everyone

cognitively “knows” that we’re depleting resources at unprecedented rates, our water is more

polluted than ever, and entire ecosystems are being destroyed. Some of us have even visited

places where we have seen the tangible and visceral evidence that these things are actually

happening. But at the end of the day, my house smells just fine, my neighborhood has trees,

my water tastes fine, and my food supply is plentiful. Our minds are not designed to respond

to environmental problems when such problems are distant or presented in abstract terms.

For information about environmental problems to “stick” and motivate people to take

immediate action, such information must be concrete, simple, and emotional (Heath and

Heath 2007). As in the poisonous gas example, industries could be required to discolor their

invisible but harmful emissions, and city governments might consider altering the taste and

smell of public drinking water according to the level of pollutants detected. Future research is

needed to examine ways to make pro-environmental messages optimally tangible and visceral

without leading people to tune out or habituate to the problem.

32

Biophilia. Although human nature has been shaped to extract and consume resources,

our ancestors did live in natural settings for hundreds of thousands of years. A growing body

of research suggests that our evolutionary history on the savannahs (rather than in cement

boxes in concrete cities) may have endowed us with a sense of biophilia—an appreciation

and desire for nature (Wilson 2006). Studies find that humans around the world are attracted

to similar types of natural landscapes, and people in modern cities go out of their way to

make their living spaces to be more like our ancestral environments (Kaplan and Kaplan

1989). Exposure to such natural environments is even known to increase recovery from

stressful experiences such as surgery (Ulrich 1984). In line with the fact that consumers

spend significant amounts of money to be surrounded by nature, American and European

zoos attract more annual visitors than all professional sports events combined (Wilson 2006).

Although modern concrete cities are different from our natural ancestral dwellings, all

people likely posses the sometimes-dormant ability to love and cherish nature. Recent

research shows that when city residents are shown short video clips of natural scenery, they

show more restraint in commons dilemmas and donate more money to environmental causes

(Steentjes and Van Vugt 2010). However, with an increasing percentage of the world

population living in large cities, we must find creative ways to tap and unleash our dormant

biophilia to promote a sustainable life style. Future research needs to examine, for example,

whether for children growing up in urban environments, exposure to trees, animals, and

enjoyable outdoor experiences may promote a life-long environmental commitment.

CONCLUSION

This paper was motivated by two practical marketing questions: (1) What advice do

marketers have for crafting effective persuasion strategies to lessen resource depletion,

restrain wasteful consumption, and spur sustainable behaviors?; and (2) What advice do

33

marketers have for avoiding costly mistakes when crafting such messages? Although our

field no doubt has much to say in response to these questions, here we explicitly focused on

answering these questions—and providing novel theoretical insights into consumption,

conservation, and sustainability—by taking an evolutionary perspective that is ideally suited

to shed light onto the ancestral roots of modern consumer behavior.

By considering our evolved human nature, we proposed a framework stating that

many modern environmental problems are caused or exacerbated by a small set of ancestral

tendencies. Our species has a long history of creating ecological problems, meaning that

sustainability is not going to come easily. Indeed, our framework highlights that many

communication strategies designed to promote sustainable consumption and environmental

conservation are sub-optimal. These strategies constitute important and preventable

marketing mistakes because they ignore important aspects of human nature, leading them to

fight an uphill battle against ancestral tendencies. To remedy these types of mistakes, we

considered multiple evolutionary-based theories that point to the origins of each ancestral

tendency. By considering how and why deep ancestral forces continue to shape modern

behaviors that impact the environment, we proposed that each of these tendencies can be

harnessed and redirected to create more optimal persuasion strategies to lessen resource

depletion, restrain wasteful consumption, and spur sustainable behaviors.

The framework presented here offers clear guidance to marketers for crafting

persuasion strategies and avoiding costly mistakes by working with, rather than against,

human nature (see Table 1). Perhaps more importantly, the framework presents many

theoretically-guided directions for future consumer research investigating sustainability,

overconsumption, and pro-environmental behavior. When considering the topic of

sustainability and overconsumption, marketers have sometimes been viewed as part of the

problem. But marketers are also ideally positioned and highly capable of being part of the

34

solution. Human nature has contributed to creating modern environmental problems and

human nature is poised to help solve them.

35

REFERENCES

Allen, C. T. (1982), “Self-Perception Based Strategies For Stimulating Energy

Conservation,” Journal of Consumer Research, 8, 381-390.

Anderson, C. D. and J. D. Claxton (1982), “Barriers to Consumer Choice of Energy-Efficient

Products,” Journal of Consumer Research, 9, 163-170.

Asch, Solomon (1956), “Studies of Independence and Conformity,” Psychological

Monographs, 70.

Bahn, P. G., and J. Flenley (1992), Easter Island, Earth Island. New York: Thames &

Hudson.

Barclay, Pat (2004), “Trustworthiness and Competitive Altruism Can Also Solve the

“Tragedy of the Commons,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 209–220.

Barrett, H. C., & R. Kurzban (2006), “Modularity in Cognition: Framing the Debate,”

Psychological Review, 113, 628-647.

Bateson, M., Daniel Nettle, G. Roberts (2006), “Cues of Being Watched Enhance

Cooperation in a Real-World Setting,” Biology Letters, 3, 412-4.

Berkowitz, M. K., and G. H. Haines (1984), “The Relationships Between Relative Attributes,

Relative Preferences, and Market Share—The Case of Solar Energy in Canada,”

Journal of Consumer Research, 11, 754-762.

Bird, R., and E. A. Smith (2005), “Signaling Theory, Strategic Interaction, and Symbolic

Capital,” Current Anthropology, 46, 221-248.

Boone, J. L. (1998), “The Evolution of Magnanimity: When is it Better to Give Than to

Receive?,” Human Nature, 9, 1-21.

Brewer, M. B., and R. M. Kramer (1986), “Choice Behavior in Social Dilemmas: Effects

of Social Identity, Group Size and Decision Framing,” Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 3, 543-549.

36

Brown, David (1991). Human universals. Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill.

Boyd, R., and P. J. Richerson (2005), The Origin and Evolution of Cultures, Oxford

University Press.

Burnstein, E., C. Crandall, and S. Kitayama (1994), “Some Neo-Darwinian Decision Rules

for Altruism: Weighing the Cues for Inclusive Fitness as a Function of the Biological

Importance of the Decision,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 773-

789.

Buss, D. M. (1995), “Evolutionary Psychology: A New Paradigm for Psychological Science,”

Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1–49.

Casscells, W., Schoenberger, A., & Graboys, T.B. (1978), “Interpretation by Physicians of

Clinical Laboratory Results,” New England Journal of Medicine, 299, 999-1001.

Chartrand, T., and R. Van Baaren (2009), “Human Mimicry,” Advances in Experimental

Social Psychology, 41, 219-274.

Cialdini, R. B. (2003), “Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment,” Current

Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 105-109.

Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004), “Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity,”

Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591-621.

Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990), “A Focus Theory of Normative

Conduct: Recycling the Concept of Norms to Reduce Littering in Public Places,”

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015-1026.

Colarelli, S. M. (2003), No Best Way, An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource

Management, New York: Praeger.

Cosmides, L (1989), “The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How

Humans Reason? Studies With the Wason Selection Task,” Cognition, 31, 187-276.

Cosmides, L., and J. Tooby (1996), “Are Humans Good Intuitive Statisticians After All?:

37

Rethinking Some Conclusions of the Literature on Judgment Under Uncertainty,”

Cognition, 58, 1-73.

Cottrell, C. A., Neuberg, S. L., & Li, N. P. (2007), “What Do People Desire in Others? A

Sociofunctional Perspective on the Importance of Different Valued Characteristics,”

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 208-231.

Craig, C. S., and J. M. McCann (1978), “Assessing Communication Effects on Energy

Conservation,” Journal of Consumer Research, 5, 82-88.

Cuddy, Amy J. C., and Doherty, K. T. (2010), “OPOWER: Increasing Energy Efficiency

Through Normative Influence,” Harvard Business School Case N9-911-16.

Daly, M., and M. Wilson (1988), Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Darwin, C. (1859), On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation

of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: Appelton & Co.

Darwin, C. (1871), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: Appelton

& Co.

Dawes, R. M. (1980), “Social Dilemmas,” Annual Review of Psychology, 31, 169-193.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.

Deighton, John, Debbie MacInnis, Ann McGill and Baba Shiv (2010), “Broadening the

Scope of Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16.

Diamond, J. (1995), “Easter’s End,” Discover magazine, 16(8), 62-69.

Diamond, J. (2005), Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. London: Allen Lane.

De Cremer, D., and M. Van Vugt (2002), “Intra- and Intergroup Dynamics of Leadership in

Social Dilemmas: A Relational Model of Cooperation,” Journal of Experimental

Social Psychology, 38, 126-136.

Diener, E., and E. M. Suh (2000), Culture and subjective wellbeing. Boston: MIT Press

Dietz, T., E. Ostrom, and P. C. Stern (2003), “The Struggle to Govern the Commons,”

38

Science, 302, 1907-1912.

Domjan, M (2005), “Pavlovian Conditioning: A Functional Perspective,” Annual Review of

Psychology, 56, 179-206.

Dunbar, R.I.M., and L. Barrett (2007), Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology.

Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Durante, K. M., Griskevicius, V., Hill, S.E., Perilloux, C., & Li, N. P. (forthcoming),

“Ovulation, Female Competition, and Product Choice: Hormonal Influences on

Consumer Behavior,” Journal of Consumer Research.

Ellis, B. J. (2004), “Timing of Pubertal Maturation in Girls,” Psychological Bulletin, 130, 920

958.

Ellis, B. J., A. J. Figueredo, B. H. Brumbach, B. H., G. L. Schlomer (2009), “Fundamental

Dimensions of Environmental Risk: The Impact of Harsh Versus Unpredictable

Environments on the Evolution and Development of Life History Strategies,” Human

Nature, 20, 204-268.

Foley, R. A. (1997), “The Adaptive Legacy of Human Evolution: A Search for the

Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness,” Evolutionary Anthropology, 4, 194-203.

Frank, R. (1985), Choosing the right pond: Human behaviour and the quest for status. New

York: Oxford University Press.

Frank, R. (2007), Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class. Berkeley:

University of California Press.

Frederick, Shane, George Loewenstein, & Ted O'Donoghue (2002), "Time Discounting and

Time Preference: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, 40, 351-401.

Fritzsche, D. J. (1981), “An Analysis of Energy Consumption Patterns by Stage of Family

Life Cycle,” Journal of Marketing Research, 18, 227-232.

39

Gandolfi, Arthur, Anna Gandolfi, and David P. Barash (2002), Economics as an Evolutionary

Science: From Utility to Fitness, Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick, NJ.

Gardner, G., and P. C. Stern (2002), Environmental problems and human behaviour. London:

Pearson.

Gifford, R., and D. W. Hine (1997), “Toward Cooperation in Social Dilemmas,” Canadian

Journal of Behavioral Science, 29, 167-178.

Gigerenzer, G. (2000), Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Gigerenzer, G., and P. M. Todd (1999), Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Godoy, R., V. Reyes-García, W. R. Leonard, T. Huanca, T. McDade, V. Vadez, ans S.

Tanner (2007), “Signaling by Consumption in a Native Amazonian Society,”

Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 124-134.

Goldstein, N. J., and R. B. Cialdini (2007), “Using Social Norms as a Lever of Social

Influence,” In A. Pratkanis (Ed.), The Science of Social Influence: Advances and

Future Progress (pp. 167-192). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Goldstein, N. J., R. B. Cialdini, and V. Griskevicius, V (2008), “A Room With a Viewpoint:

Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels,” Journal of

Consumer Research, 35, 472-482.

Goldstein, N. J., V. Griskevicius, and R. B. Cialdini (2010), “Reciprocity by Proxy:

Harnessing the Power of Obligation to Foster Cooperation,” Manuscript submitted for

publication.

Gotts, J., and M van Vugt (2010), “Environmental Behavior as a Mate Quality Signal,”

Unpublished manuscript. VU Amsterdam.

Green, L., and J. Myerson (2004), “A Discounting Framework for Choice With Delayed and

40

Probabilistic Rewards,” Psychological Bulletin, 130, 769-792.

Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., Sundie, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Miller, G. F., & Kenrick, D. T.

(2007). Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: When romantic motives

elicit strategic costly signals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 85-

102.

Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010). Going green to be seen: Status,

reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 98, 392-404.

Griskevicius, Vladas, Noah J. Goldstein, Chad R. Mortensen, Jill M. Sundie, Robert B.

Cialdini, and Douglas T. Kenrick (2009), “Fear and Loving in Las Vegas: Evolution,

Emotion, and Persuasion,” Journal of Marketing Research, 46, 385-395.

Griskevicius, Vladas, Michelle N. Shiota, and Stephen M. Nowlis (2010). “The Many Shades

of Rose-Colored Glasses: An Evolutionary Approach to The Influence of Different

Positive Emotions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 238-250.

Griskevicius, V., J. M. Tybur, J. A. Ackerman, A. W. Delton, and T. E. Robertson (2010),

“The Influence of Sex Ratio on Saving, Borrowing, and Spending: An Experimental

Approach,” Manuscript submitted for publication.

Griskevicius, V., A. W. Delton, T. E. Robertson, and J. M. Tybur (forthcoming),

“Environmental Contingency in Life History Strategies: The Influence of Mortality

and Socioeconomic Status on Reproductive Timing,” Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology

Hamilton, W. D. (1964), “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior, I, II,” Journal of

Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.

41

Harbaugh, William, Ulrich Mayr, and Dan Burghart (2007), “Neural Responses to Taxation

and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations,” Science, 316, 1622 -

1625.

Hardin, G. (1968), “Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162, 1243-1248.

Hardin, G. (1995), Living with limits: Ecology, economics, and population taboos. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Hardy, C. L., and M. van Vugt (2006), “Nice Guys Finish First: The Competitive Altruism

Hypothesis,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1402-1413.

Haselton, M. G., and D. Nettle (2006), “The Paranoid Optimist: An Integrative Evolutionary

Model of Cognitive Biases,” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 47-66.

Hawkes, K. (1992), “Sharing and Collective Action,” In E. A. Smith and B. Winterhalder

Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior (pp. 269-300), New York: Aldine de

Gruyter.

Heath, C., and D. Heath (2007), Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. Ne

York: Random House.

Houston, D. A. (1983), “Implicit Discount Rates and the Purchase of Untried, Energy-Saving

Durable Goods,” Journal of Consumer Research, 10, 236-246.

Iredale, W., M. van Vugt, and R. I. M. Dunbar (2008), “Showing Off in Humans: Male

Generosity as a Mating Signal,” Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 386-392.

Jones, O. D. and T. H. Goldsmith (2005), "Law and Behavioral Biology," Columbia Law

Review, 105 , 405-502.

Kacelnik, A. (1997), “Normative and Descriptive Models of Decision Making: Time

Discounting and Risk Sensitivity,” in G. R. Bock and G. Cardew (Eds).)

Characterizing Human Psychological Adaptations. Chichester (UK): Wiley.

Kameda, T., M. Takezawa, and R. Hastie (2003), “The Logic of Social Sharing: An

42

Evolutionary Game Analysis of Adaptive Norm Development,” Personality and

Social Psychology Review, 7, 2-19.

Kaplan, H. S., and S. W. Gangestad (2005), “Life History and Evolutionary Psychology,” Pp.

68-95 D.M. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Wiley.

Kaplan, R., and S. Kaplan (1989), The experience of nature: A psychological perspective.

Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press.

Kenrick, D.T., Sundie, J. M. & Kurzban, R. (2008). Cooperation and conflict between kith,

kin, and strangers: Game theory by domains. In C. Crawford & D. Krebs (Eds.),

Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kenrick, D. T., V. Griskevicius, S. L. Neuberg, and M. Schaller (2010), “Renovating The

Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations,”

Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 292–314.

Komorita, S., and C. D. Parks (1994), Social dilemmas. Madison, Wis: Brown & Benchmark.

Low, B. S. (1996), “Behavioral Ecology of Conservation in Traditional Societies,” Human

Nature, 7, 353-379.

Luchs, Michael G., Rebecca Walker Naylor, Julie R. Irwin, and Rajagopal Raghunathan

(2010) “The Sustainability Liability: Potential Negative Effects of Ethicality on

Product Preference”, Journal of Marketing, 74, 18-31.

McClure, S. M., D. I. Laibson, G. Loewenstein, and J. D. Cohen (2004), “Separate Neural

Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards,” Science, 306, 503-507.

McDougall, G. H., Claxton, J. D., Brent Richie, J. R, and Anderson, C. D. (1981), “Consumer

Energy Research: A Review,” Journal of Consumer Research, 8, 343-354

McNeill, D. L., and W. L. Wilkie (1979), “Public Policy and Consumer Information—Impact

of the New Energy Labels,” Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 1-11.

43

Milinski, M., D. Semmann, H. Krambeck, and J. Marotzke (2006), “Stabilizing the Earth’s

Climate is Not a Losing Game: Supporting Evidence From Public Goods

Experiments,” Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 3994-3998.

Miller, G. F. (2009), Spent: Sex, evolution, and consumer behavior. New York: Viking.

Neuberg, S. L, D. T. Kenrick, and M. Schaller (2010), “Evolutionary Social Psychology,” In

S.T. Fiske, D.T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.) Handbook of Social Psychology (5th

edition). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Newman, G. E., and Shen Y. J. (2010), “The Counterintuitive Effects of Thank-you Gifts on

Charitable Giving,” Manuscript Under Review.

Nesse R. M. and S. C. Stearns (2008), “The Great Opportunity: Evolutionary Applications in

Medicine.,” Evolutionary Applications, 1, 28- 48.

Nolan, J. P., P. W. Schultz, R. B. Cialdini, N. J. Goldstein, and V. Griskevicius (2008),

“Normative Social Influence is Underdetected,” Personality and Social Psychology

Bulletin, 34, 913-923.

Nowak, M. A., and K. Sigmund (2005), “Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity,” Nature, 437,

1291-1298.

OECD (2001), OECD reports. Paris, France..

Öhman, A, and S. Mineka (2001), “Fears, Phobias, and Preparedness: Toward an Evolved

Module of Fear and Fear Learning,” Psychological Review, 108, 483-522.

Ornstein, R. and P. Ehrlich (1989), New world, new mind: Moving toward conscious

evolution. New York: Touchstone Books.

Oskamp, S. (2000), “A Sustainable Future for Humanity: How Can Psychology Help?

American Psychologist, 55, 496-508.

Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective

action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

44

Palmer, C. T. (1991), “Kin-Selection, Reciprocal Altruism, and Information Sharing Among

Maine Lobstermen,” Ethology and Sociobiology, 12, 221-235.

Park, J., M. Schaller, and M. van Vugt (2008), “The Psychology of Human Kin Recognition:

Heuristic Cues, Erroneous Inferences, and Their Implications,” Review of General

Psychology, 12, 215-235.

Peattie, Ken and Sue Peattie (2009), “Social Marketing: A Pathway to Consumption

Reduction,” Journal of Business Research, 62, 260-268.

Penn, D. J. (2003), “The Evolutionary Roots of Our Environmental Problems: Toward a

Darwinian Ecology,” Quarterly Review of Biology, 78, 275-301.

Penn, D. J., and J. Mysterud (2007), Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems.

London: Transaction Publishers.

Pham, Michel Tuan (2007), “Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation

of Empirical Evidence,” Review of General Psychology, 11, 155-178.

Pinker, S. (1994), The language instinct. New York: Norton.

Pinker, S. (2002), The blank slate. London: Penguin Classics.

Powers, N, A. Blackman, T. P. Lyon, and U. Narain (2008), “Does Disclosure Reduce

Pollution? Evidence From India’s Green Rating Project,” Discussion Paper,

Resources for the Future, RFF 08-38. Retrieved on October 24, 2010 from:

http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-08-38.pdf

Price, M. (2003). Pro-community altruism and social status in a Shuar village. Human

Nature, 14, 191-208.

Richerson, P. J., and R. Boyd (2006), Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human

evolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Saad, G. (2007), The evolutionary bases of consumption. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates.

45

Saad, Gad (forthcoming), Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences. Springer:

Heidelberg, Germany.

Saad, Gad and John G. Vongas (2009), “The Effect of Conspicuous Consumption on Men’s

Testosterone Levels,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110,

80-92.

Schultz, P. W., J. P. Nolan, R. B. Cialdini, N. J. Goldstein, and V. Griskevicius (2007), “The

Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms,”

Psychological Science, 18, 429-434.

Simon, H. (1990), “A Mechanism for Social Selection and Successful Altruism,” Science, 21,

1665-1668.

Slovic, P. (1987), “Perception of Risk,” Science, 236, 280-285.

Smith, E., and J. Wishnie (2000), “Conservation and Subsistence in Small Scale Societies,”

Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 493-524.

Smith, E. A. and R. Bliege Bird (2000), “Turtle Hunting and Tombstone Opening: Public

Generosity as Costly Signaling,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 21, 245-261.

Sundie, J. M., R. B. Cialdini, V. Griskevicius, and D. T. Kenrick (2006), “Evolutionary

Social Influence,” In Evolution and Social Psychology, Schaller et al. (Eds.), New

York, NY: Psychology Press, 287-316.

Sundie, Jill M., Douglas T. Kenrick, Vladas Griskevicius, Joshua M. Tybur, Kathleen D.

Vohs, & Daniel J. Beal (forthcoming), “Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorsten Veblen:

Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System,” Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology.

Sugiyama, L., J. Tooby, and L. Cosmides (2002), “Cross-Cultural Evidence of Cognitive

Adaptations for Social Exchange Among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia,”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11537-11542.

46

Steentjes, D., and M. van Vugt (2010), “Exposure To Nature Promotes Cooperation in Social

Dilemmas,” Manuscript Submitted for Publication.

Tajfel, H. & J. C. Turner (1979), “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict,” In H. Tajfel

(Ed.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, (pp. 33-47).

Tenbrunsel, A., & D. Messick (1999), “Sanctioning Systems, Decision Frames and

Cooperation,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 684-707.

Thogarsen, John (2010). “Country Differences in Sustainable Consumption: The Case of

Organic Food,” Journal of Macromarketing, 30, 171-185.

Tinbergen, N. (1963), “On the Aims and Methods of Ethology,” Zeitschrift für

Tierpsychologie, 20, 410-433.

Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L.

Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the

generation of culture (pp.19-136). New York: Oxford University Press.

Toyota Reports 2007 and December Sales (2008). Retrieved from:

http://www.toyota.com/about/news/corporate/2008/01/03-1-sales.html

Trivers, R. L. (1971), “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology,

46, 35-57.

Trivers, R. L. (1972), “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection,” In B. Campbell (Ed.),

Sexual selection and the descent of man: 1871-1971 (pp. 136-179). Chicago: Aldine.

Van Lange, P. A. M., D. E. Bruin, W. Otten, & J. A. Joireman (1997), “Development of

Prosocial, Individualistic, and Competitive Orientations: Theory and Preliminary

Evidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 733-746.

Varadarajan, P. R., and A Menon (1988), “Cause-Related Marketing: A Coalignment of

Marketing Strategy and Corporate Philanthropy,” Journal of Marketing, 52, 58-74.

47

Ulrich, R. S. (1984), “View Through a Window May Influence Recovery From Surgery,”

Science, 4647, 420-421.

Van den Bergh, B., S. Dewitte, and L. Warlop (2008), “Bikinis Instigate Generalized

Impatience in Intertemporal Choice,” Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 85-97

Van Vugt, M. (2001), “Community Identification Moderating the Impact of Financial

Incentives in a Natural Social Dilemma: Water Conservation,” Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 25, 731-745.

Van Vugt, M. (2009), “Averting the Tragedy of the Commons: Using Social Psychological

Science to Protect the Environment,” Current Directions in Psychological Science,

18, 169-173.

Van Vugt, M., and C. Hardy (2010), “Cooperation for Reputation: Wasteful Contributions as

Costly Signals in Public Goods,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 13, 1-

11.

Van Vugt, M., G. Roberts, and C. Hardy (2007), “Competitive Altruism: Development of

Reputation-Based Cooperation in Groups,” In R. Dunbar & L. Barrett, Handbook of

Evolutionary Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 531-540.

Watson, T. (2006). Consumer philanthropy. OnPhilanthropy. Retrieved October 23, 2010

from http://onphilanthropy.com/2006/special-report-consumer-philanthropy/

Wilson, E. O. (2006), The creation: An appeal to save life on earth. New York: Norton.

Wilson, E. O. (1998), Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York: Alfred Knopf.

Wilson, M., M. Daly, and S. Gordon (1998), “Ehe Evolved Psychological Apparatus of

Human Decision-Making is One Source of Environemntal Problems,” In T. Caro

(Ed.) Behavioral Ecology and Conservation Biology. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Wilson, M., and M. Daly (1997), “Life Expectancy, Economic Inequality, Homicide, and

48

Reproductive Timing in Chicago Neighborhoods,” British Medical Journal, 314,

1271-1274.

Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (2004). Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?

Proceedings of the Royal Society, B 271, Suppl. 4, 177-179.

Wilson, M., and M Daly (2005), “Carpe Diem: Adaptation and Devaluing the Future,”

Quarterly Review of Biology, 80, 55–60.

Wilson, M., M. Daly, and S. Gordon (2007), “The Evolved Psychological Apparatus of

Human Decision-Making is One Source of Environmental Problems,” In D. Penn & I.

Mysterud, (Eds.) Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems. New

Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Yadav, Manjit S. (2010), "The Decline of Conceptual Articles and Implications for

Knowledge Development," Journal of Marketing, 74 (1), 1-19.

Zhu, W. X., L. Lu, and T. Hesketh (2009), “China’s Excess Males, Sex Selective Abortion,

and One Child Policy: Analysis of Data from 2005 International Census Survey,”

British Medical Journal, 338, b1211

49

TABLE 1: EVOLUTIONARY FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABILITY MARKETING

Ancestral Human Tendency

Key Theories Sustainability Problem

Marketing Mistakes Evolutionarily Informed Strategies

Future Research Questions

Self Interest

People prioritize self-interest over group welfare

Kin Selection Reciprocal Altruism Indirect Reciprocity

Resource

depletion

Imploring people to value the group above oneself

Urging self-restraint for sake of other people

Urging self-restraint for the sake of the environment

Highlight genetic self-interest

Create small social networks resembling ancestral groups

Threaten reputations through “name and shame” campaigns

Harness “tribal instinct” to foster social group identity

Can fictitious kinship labels foster self-sacrifice and green behavior?

Can online blogs and social media sites create small communities resembling ancestral groups?

Can eyes on signs or computer monitors spur green behavior?

Relative Status

People are motivated by relative rather than absolute status

Costly Signaling Competitive Altruism

Wasteful

consumption

Urging people to be content with their current status

Asking people to behave in ways that lowers their status

Emphasizing that we have more than people in distant places

Publicize “green lists” that rank most pro-environmental companies, celebrities, or ordinary citizens

Make self-sacrificing green behaviors more public

Might using celebrities decrease the adoption of some green behaviors?

Which types of green products should have large premiums, and which ones should have large rebates?

Imitation

People copy what others are doing

Cultural Evolution Social Norms

Unsustainable

behaviors

Depicting environment problems as regrettably frequent

Informing people of what the average person is doing

Offering donation to green cause if people first purchase product

Depict situations showing prevalence of green behavior

Encourage those above average to continue behavior

Donate to green cause, then ask consumers to purchase product

If green behavior is not prevalent, can presenting absolute rather than relative numbers be more effective?

If green behavior is not prevalent, can depicting that there is an increasing trend be more effective?

Future Discounting

People value the present more than the future

Life History Sexual Selection Parental Investment

Overpopulation

Emphasizing consequences of wasteful behavior for future generations

Calling to value needs of future generations as much as current

Emphasize consequences of wasteful behavior for the person doing it

Depict that women prefer men who engage in sustainable acts

Can messages highlighting stability & predictability increase valuation of the future and sustainability?

Can more predictability & stability in childcare lead kids to discount future less steeply as adults?

Environmental Mismatch

People respond to novel information with ancestral minds

Mismatch Ecological Rationality Biophilia

All of the above

Presenting environmental problems in probabilistic terms

Using large numbers

Depicting environmental problems without engaging any of the five senses

Present environment problems in concrete, frequentist terms

Elicit visceral responses to local environmental problems

Create visible link between behavior and the environment

Which visceral messages will be most effective without leading people to tune out or habituate to the problem?

Can exposure to nature, especially at an early age, encourage sustainable behavior as adults?

50