The article “Motivating the Skeptical and Unconcerned: Considering Values, Worldviews and Norms When Planning Messages Encouraging Energy Conservation and Efficiency Behaviors” was written by Laura M. Arpan, Andrew R. Opel and Jia Lu and published in the Journal of Applied Environmental Education and Communication in 2013.

This article tackles a few of the most common question in Environmental Education: Do conservatives have more self-enhancing reasons behind their conservation efforts? How does one target those who are skeptic about conservation and encourage them to live sustainably? And how do different worldviews play into motivation toward a green lifestyle?

Researchers started out by using software which aided in gathering a group of 409 college-educated citizens with diverse personalities in order to serve as an accurate representation of the United States. The group was given a 41-question internet survey to complete, which was based around energy consumption. Each question was put into a category, which pertained either to: Efficiency Behaviors (their energy use and intentions behind it), Political Orientation (Democrat, Independent or Republican), Perceived Risk/Problem Awareness (ex: “Do you think global warming is happening?” and “Do you think the U.S. is experiencing an energy crisis?”), Descriptive norms (“Do others around you try to conserve energy?”) and Motivational variables (reasons why they did or did not conserve energy).

The results showed that there was no association between political party and recent behavior and that descriptive norms and personal moral norms were weakly correlated with recent behavior.  An interesting find was that both liberals and conservatives make efforts to decrease energy consumption mainly for financial reasons.

Essentially, this study goes to show that the most effective way to encourage energy consumption is not through campaigns to protect the environment, but rather through financial motivation, or popularization of the financial benefits of energy conservation.