The Combined Effect of the Foot-in-the-Door Technique and the “But You Are Free” Technique: An Evaluation on the Selective Sorting of Household Wastes

Nicolas Guéguen 1 Sébastien Meineri 1 Angélique Martin 1 Isabelle Grandjean
1 CRPCC EA 1285 - Centre de Recherches en Psychologie Cognition et Communication
Abstract : In a field experiment using the selective sorting of household wastes as the dependant variable, we have tested the combined effect of two techniques that induced compliance to a request: the foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique and the "but you are free ..." technique. Homeowners were asked to record on a form their entire household wastes for 1 month. In the FITD technique, participants were first asked to respond to a short survey on selective sorting habits. In the "but you are free ... " condition, the request for participation included a sentence that stated that the participant was free to accept to participate or not: "Of course you are free to accept or to refuse." In the combined FITD/"you are free ..." condition, the first request was addressed to the participant and the sentence that stated that the participant was free appeared in the second request. In a control condition, the final request was addressed without any mention that the participant was free or not to accept. Results found that the combined FITD/"you are free ..." condition was associated with greater compliance in completing the survey (78.%) than the single FITD (60.0%) and the "but you are free ..." condition (56.0%), whereas each of these three experimental conditions elicited greater compliance to complete the survey than in the control condition (40.0%). Commitment theory and practical interest of this combined technique for ecology are discussed.
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Journal articles
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https://hal.univ-rennes2.fr/hal-01980967
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Submitted on : Monday, January 14, 2019 - 5:42:23 PM
Last modification on : Friday, March 29, 2019 - 10:45:29 AM

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  • HAL Id : hal-01980967, version 1

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UNIV-RENNES2 | UNIV-BREST | UR2-HB | UNIV-RENNES | LP3C

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Nicolas Guéguen, Sébastien Meineri, Angélique Martin, Isabelle Grandjean. The Combined Effect of the Foot-in-the-Door Technique and the “But You Are Free” Technique: An Evaluation on the Selective Sorting of Household Wastes. Ecopsychology, 2010, 2 (4), pp.231-237. ⟨hal-01980967⟩

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