The moderating role of individual differences in responses to benefit and temporal framing of messages promoting residential energy saving

This study examined how framing of residential energy-saving benefits as environmental or economic (i.e., benefit framing) and long-term or short-term (i.e., temporal framing) influenced individuals' attitudes toward and perceived outcome efficacy of energy-saving behaviors, and, especially, how individual differences in environmental concern, political orientation and consideration of future consequences (CFC) moderated message framing effects. Data were collected from 461 U.S. residents in an online experiment. Results from moderated regression analyses suggested that environmentally framed benefits induced more positive attitudes toward energy saving than economically framed benefits among those with moderate levels of environmental concern and among more politically liberal participants, suggesting that environmentally framed messages might stimulate positive responses only within a subset of U.S. energy consumers. Short-term, economic benefits induced the most positive attitudes and highest outcome efficacy among participants with lower levels of CFC. Implications for promotional messages about energy saving are discussed.