Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres “Be Careful What You Say”: The role of psychological reactance on the impact of pro-environmental normative appeals Christos Kavvouris a, ⁎ , Polymeros Chrysochou a,b , John Thøgersen a a Department of Management, Aarhus University, Denmark b Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, School of Marketing, University of South Australia, Australia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Normative appeals Psychological reactance Self-construal Pro-environmental behaviors ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate the impact of psychological reactance produced by normative appeals on the in- tention to behave sustainably. Across four studies, we demonstrate that freedom threat is an antecedent of psychological reactance to a pro-environmental normative appeal. We further show that the impact of pro- environmental normative appeals on behavioral intentions is serially mediated through freedom threat and counterarguing. Descriptive (injunctive) normative appeals produce lower (higher) psychological reactance, which subsequently leads to higher (lower) behavioral intentions. Finally, we provide evidence that the above relationships depend on self-construal, with descriptive normative appeals provoking lower psychological re- actance than injunctive normative appeals only when the interdependent self is activated. We discuss implica- tions for theory and practice. 1. Introduction Campaigns promoting pro-social behavior by employing descriptive norms (i.e., providing information on what is the common behavior) can be effective. In the US, for example, campaigns based on descriptive normative appeals managed to reduce energy consumption among 600,000 households by two percent (Allcott, 2011), drinking and driving by 14 percent (see Linkerbach & Perkins, 2005) and heavy al- cohol consumption by more than 20 percent (Glider, Midyett, Mills- Novoa, Johannessen, & Collins, 2001). However, sometimes descriptive normative appeals yield the opposite results, causing a boomerang ef- fect (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein, & Griskevicius, 2007). More specifically, several studies employing descriptive normative appeals have identified groups of individuals who either engage in the opposite behavior or are not affected by the appeal (Allcott, 2011; Schultz et al., 2007; Yakobovitch & Grinstein, 2016). Injunctive normative appeals (i.e., providing information on which behavior is desirable or undesirable) may prove more efficient (Cialdini, 2003). They are more appropriate in cases where deliberation is unlikely (Melnyk, van Herpen, Fischer, & van Trijp, 2011), their in- fluence is more robust overtime (Reno, Cialdini, & Kallgren, 1993), and they mitigate boomerang effects when used in tandem with descriptive normative appeals (Allcott, 2011; Schultz et al., 2007). However, in- dividuals may dislike being told what to do and may be skeptical towards campaigns in general. In fact, research in the field of adver- tising has shown that even if assertive slogans in ads are common practice, individuals rate assertive ads lower and react to them more negatively in comparison to non-assertive ads (Kronrod, Grinstein, & Wathieu, 2012; Zemack-Rugar, Moore, & Fitzsimons, 2017). Thus, there may be a discrepancy between what a campaign aims to communicate and how individuals perceive the message and react to it. When a campaign strongly suggests a desired action, individuals may react negatively. Social norms campaigns are no different. However, injunctive normative appeals (i.e., what others think is ap- propriate to do) and descriptive normative appeals (i.e., what others typically do) differ in how explicitly they call for action (Jacobson, Mortensen, & Cialdini, 2011). Psychological reactance theory posits that any attempt to persuade individuals to change their current atti- tude or behavior may be perceived as a threat to their individual agency and thus as a threat to their freedom to choose (Brehm, 1966). Con- sequently, knowledge on how individuals react to pro-environmental messages in certain situations is crucial to make social norms cam- paigns more efficient. When targeting audiences with normative appeals, campaign de- signers must pay attention to and tailor the appeal to the audiences’ specific characteristics (Cialdini et al., 2006; Melnyk et al., 2011; White & Simpson, 2013). For example, past findings suggest that the effec- tiveness of injunctive and descriptive normative appeals (see Cialdini, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.10.018 Received 31 October 2018; Received in revised form 10 October 2019; Accepted 11 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Management, Aarhus BSS, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark. E-mail address: chka@mgmt.au.dk (C. Kavvouris). Journal of Business Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0148-2963/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Christos Kavvouris, Polymeros Chrysochou and John Thøgersen, Journal of Business Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.10.018