Moral self-evaluative incentives outweigh material ones in environmental change programs

Evidence

In large-scale change programs, the incentives are built into policy initiatives. The incentives for environmental sustainability are not just material ones, however. The most powerful are the self-evaluative ones, which are rooted in moral values regarding the extinction of other species, the degradation of ecologic systems, and the excessive consumption that make the earth less habitable for future generations. Value-based incentives add force to the social incentives that are codified in the normative structure of a society. To gain public support for environmental initiatives, a change program must address denials of human-caused global warming and the justifications and exonerations that strip morality from environmentally destructive practices. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2945

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to existing vault claims about how ordinary people rationalize harmful policy through exemption and justification — here Bandura states the change program must dismantle those same moral-stripping mechanisms. — connects to: Material incentives for relinquishing sacred values backfire and harden resistance — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 48; Defending sacred values defies material cost-benefit prediction across decision contexts. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 22; Respectability theorists prioritized inner moral reform over structural environmental change — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 926
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2945