Time-as-Money Mindset Decreases Green Behaviors

Pacific Standard:

How can people be convinced to think about the environmental consequences of their behaviors? New research suggests one surprising piece of the answer may be: Pay them a salary, rather than an hourly wage.

“People are less likely to engage in environmentally friendly behavior if they are paid by the hour, a form of compensation that leads people to see their time as money,” write University of British Columbia psychologists Ashley Whillans and Elizabeth Dunn.

In five studies, described in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, they consistently found that “thinking about the economic value of time decreases environmental behavior.”

Read the whole story: Pacific Standard