Hege Landsvik: Beyond Green Intentions

On Monday 26 January Hege Landsvik will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Many of us want to live a more eco-friendly life: buy second-hand, use reusable cups, and recycle them properly. Yet both research and practice show that such intentions often fail to translate into actual behavior.

What causes an intention-behavior gap, and how can we turn green intentions into actions in practice?

This is the central theme of the dissertation. Through four empirical articles, the dissertation examines how psychological and contextual factors influence sustainable choices in everyday life.

Article 1 examines consumers' choices between sustainable and conventional products in product categories where functional performance is particularly important, e.g., household cleaners. The results show that although sustainable products are perceived as less effective, they are nevertheless chosen more often than conventional alternatives because they are evaluated as superior on other dimensions, such as aesthetics, safety and symbolic attributes.

Optimizing Logistics under Uncertainty

On Thursday 29 January Pankaj Kumar Sinha will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Articles 2, 3, and 4 constitute the core of the dissertation. They are based on field experiments conducted at Brann Stadion with the goal of improving waste sorting in busy, crowded environments. Articles 2 and 3 examine whether appealing to social identity, here football fans’ affiliation with their club can improve waste sorting behavior.

The findings show that appealing to strong social identity can strengthen “green intentions”, but that this must be combined with concrete opportunities for action, such as competition against other groups, to change actual behavior.

Article 4 shifts focus to the system level and demonstrates how relatively small changes in physical infrastructure and choice architecture can yield significant improvements. The study shows how increased accessibility and strategic placement of waste bins, combined with motivational elements, improve waste sorting at large events.

Overall, the dissertation provides new insight into the intention-behavior gap in sustainable consumer behavior and demonstrates that effective interventions should be tailored to the specific context and combine individual motivation with practical facilitation.