In addition to being an expert on persuasion, Cialdini’s spent considerable effort on studying the “social psychology” of consumers’ energy choices. The following exchange is particularly interesting:

Q: It seems like [social psychology is] fine-grained understanding of how people interact. How do you scale it up as policy, to get substantial effects?

A: As I argued in Influence, I’ve tried to identify the universals of human experience—those things that produce assent across the widest range of situations and settings and practitioners. You follow an authority; you pay back those who have given to you; you seize scarce or dwindling opportunities; you follow the lead of others like you and what they’re doing; and so on.

Take an example. The fastest growing development within marketing right now is called “social cause marketing”—it’s even outstripped sports sponsorship. It involves some entity, usually a corporate group, saying to its customers or its market, “if you purchase our product or employ our services, we will donate so much money to a good cause.” They’re banking on an understanding of the rule of reciprocity: people want to give back to those who have given to them in a meaningful exchange.

Well, we put signs in hotel room bathrooms—this isn’t published yet—that said, “[Re-use your bath towels] for the environment.” That was the control group. The other sign said, “If you [re-use your towels], we’ll donate a percentage of the savings that we get at the end of the year to an environmental cause.” That didn’t produce any increase in towel reuse.

But if we said, “We’ve already donated to an environmental cause in the name of our guests,” now we get reciprocity. That produced, I think, a 28 percent increase over either of the other strategies. You can apply this to social cause marketing: if you’re going to give a donation anyway, you should give it first.

So it is possible to employ these principles in broad-gauged ways to produce large-scale change. And it’s costless— that’s the thing.

See the entire interview on Grist.

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The federal watchdog that’s supposed to crack down on product labels that make false environmental claims has taken almost no enforcement action over the last decade, even as “green” marketing claims have exploded, agency records show.

USA Today following up on a congressional hearing on the subject that was held earlier this month. FTC officials took action on that day against Kmart and two other companies for alleged greenwashing and promise now that they’ll do more to limit false claims.

The Guardian covers the subject a bit more thoroughly, focusing on the landmark “Sins of Greenwashing” report released by the consulting company TerraChoice in February. TerraChoice found that 10.4 percent of ads in leading magazinse now contain Earth-friendly claims but that 98 percent of Earth-friendly claims are false.

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American women are paying the electric bills at home and making the critical decisions on energy use in their homes and businesses, according to the national Women’s Survey on Energy & the Environment, the first in-depth women’s survey on attitudes and awareness about energy.

The survey suggests that female bill payers also may be an untapped force for cleaner energy decision:

The nationally representative survey of 801 women 18 years or older, commissioned by Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) in collaboration with the Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment (WCEE), shows that women want the country to move toward clean energy sources, and more than half (57%) are even willing to pay $30 more per month for it.

More at Good and Green.

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More art of this ilk can be found on Toby’s Flickr page.

Just in case you’re on the consumer’s end of such transctions, here’s a more serious guide on how to avoiding greenwashing.

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The latest in a spate of environmental documentaries to hit screen, it promises to be the blockbuster of the bunch. The movie’s directed by Robert Kenner, and features two authors who have become the nation’s best-known troubadours for the local and organic food movements, Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation).

So far, it’s getting rave reviews. The most memorably line appeared in Variety: “Food Inc. does for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach.”

The most consistent bit of advice, though, is this: Don’t, under any circumstances, eat before you see this movie.

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According to Environmental Leader, Kmart Corp. called its American Fare brand disposable plates biodegradable, Tender Corp. made the same claim about its Fresh Bath-brand moist wipes, and Dyna-E International about its Lightload brand compressed dry towels:

Kmart and Tender have agreed to settle the cases against them while the case against Dyna-E will be litigated. The FTC says with the recent growth in “green” advertising and product lines, the agency will continue its efforts to ensure that environmental marketing is truthful, substantiated, and not confusing to consumers.

It seems to me that the biggest beneficiaries of tougher enforcement in this area are likely to be companies that manufacture products with legitimate environmental claims. Their walk-the-walk efforts have been diluted by a plethora of empty marketing talk.

There’s a feel-good aspect, in which consumers are kind of complicit, that takes over with the prevalence of such claims. I’m not saying superficiality goes away with enforcement on false claims, but less pervasive — and easy — greenwashing can go little way toward diminish the sense that we can buy our way out of environmental problems.

The FTC’s move comes against a backdrop of the agency trying to get a better handle of green claims. Again Environmental Leader:

Last year, the FTC held three workshops to examine issues concerning the marketing of carbon offsets and renewable energy, green packaging, and green buildings and textiles. It’s expected to update its “Green Guides” this year, which have been in place since 1992 to regulate green advertising claims.

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