The behavioral intervention "positive cueing": Altering self-perception, increasing green awareness, or undermining the signaling value of costly green behavior?

The social marketing technique “positive cueing” has been suggested to help increase pro-environmental behavior by changing perceptions of the self to which consumers want to align their behavior. However, positive cueing may also draw attention to the pro-environmental nature of previous decisions that people typically do not interpret as such. Therefore, we argue that positive cueing effects occur by making people aware that many (common) choices in everyday life are related to environmental friendliness, without leading to changes in self-perception. We present empirical support that is more in line with the reasoning that positive cueing results in a shift in the perception of choices consumers encounter rather than a shift in self-perception. Still, this account cannot explain the full pattern of results since positive cueing does not only increase low identity signaling pro-environmental choices, but even decreases high identity signaling pro-environmental choices. In hindsight, we argue that the positive cueing intervention may undermine the signaling value of costly pro-environmental behavior and increase the signaling value of cheap pro-environmental behavior. We discuss the implications for the use of positive cueing as a social marketing technique.