Does Attitude Matter? The Effects of Incentives and Employees’ Environmental Attitude on Work-Related Carbon Reduction Behavior

Firms are developing incentive systems to encourage work-related carbon reduction behavior (WCRB), which is an important source of Environmental, Social and Governance performance. However, the effects of incentives on WCRB remain inconclusive, and the interaction between these incentives and employees’ environmental attitudes has been understudied. Using an experiment in which participants made commuting choices with varying behavioral or environmental costs, we examined the effects of incentives and environmental attitude on WCRB. Drawing on economic and norm-activation theory, we predicted and found that both monetary and eco-friendly incentives significantly increase WCRB. A positive environmental attitude encourages WCRB, with the effect being more pronounced when an eco-friendly incentive is offered versus a monetary incentive. Furthermore, in terms of offsetting the negative effect of increased behavioral cost on WCRB, an eco-friendly incentive outperforms (underperforms) a monetary incentive for employees with a positive (less positive) environmental attitude. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of incentive schemes designed to promote WCRB.