Responding to climate change is often seen as a sacrifice, an effort or a cost leading to a loss of well-being. The only solution is seen as willingly giving up on pleasure to save the planet. The climate emergency and our emotional states now form a toxic relationship.
According to the Gallup Institute, negative emotions like anger, anxiety, worry and sadness have increased sharply since the beginning of the decade. Eco-anxiety, activists gluing their hands to surfaces and protest actions in museums all convey strong images of resentment.
The IPCC report on climate change and the World Happiness Report were published on the same day, March 20, 2023. In our view, this is more than just an editorial coincidence. Research into the economics of happiness applied to environmental issues actually seems to suggest a positive relationship between eco-friendly behavior and subjective well-being, thereby offering a much more optimistic perspective.
Our goal is therefore to understand and adopt these results in order to identify a possible new "double dividend." This expression usually refers to the hypothesis that environmental tax revenues lead to the benefits of a cleaner environment and lowered distortions due to pre-existing taxes. In this case, however, it refers to the fact that adopting eco-friendly behavior also makes people happier!
This is the idea of "sustainable hedonism", a term coined by Orsolya Lelkes, a researcher at Social City, a Viennese social innovation laboratory. This becomes even more true when monetary and non-monetary costs (time spent and effort) are significant, according to Thilo Haverkamp and colleagues.
As the psychologist Kate Laffan from the London School of Economics humorously pointed out, taking part in costly pro-environmental activities leads to greater satisfaction than taking a cold shower.
Satisfaction is an interesting measure, but it fails to account for the nuance between hedonic happiness (positive emotions and pleasures) and eudaimonic happiness (which reflects, among other things, a sense of purpose). This is what Laffan's work demonstrates. She suggests that pro-environmental behavior (good deeds) induces this feeling because it contributes to people's needs for autonomy, social relations and skills, which feeds eudaimonic well-being, as defined by Aristotle.
Research by Heinz Welsch and Jan Kühling from the University of Oldenburg further suggests that conforming to social norms, having a positive self-image and a chance to socialize can be among the motives behind an ecological choice. Further research by Stefano Bartolini, a professor at the University of Siena, and Francesco Sarracino, a researcher at the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of Luxembourg (STATEC), showed that people with few and/or poor-quality social relationships consume to compensate as a defensive mechanism.
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