To Encourage Sustainable Behavior Make It Fun

The human influence on climate is undeniable, with greenhouse gas emissions as the main driver of adverse changes such as global warming. To tackle this grim scenario, not only policymakers and corporations but also consumers are required to significantly reduce their emissions. Doing so, however, is often associated with little fun. Against this backdrop, we test a novel way to encourage consumers’ sustainable behavior: framing a given action as a challenge and thus injecting it with fun. We report the findings of two large-scale field experiments (n = 306,493), two behavioral follow-up experiments (n = 1,800), and one longitudinal field study (n = 52,221) that examine whether presenting low-cost sustainable actions as a challenge promotes sustainable behavior.