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; 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

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.

Document type :

Journal articles

Domain :

Humanities and Social Sciences / Psychology

Humanities and Social Sciences

Complete list of metadatas

https://hal.univ-rennes2.fr/hal-01980967
Contributor : Laurence Leroux <>
Submitted on : Monday, January 14, 2019 - 5:42:23 PM
Last modification on : Friday, March 29, 2019 - 10:45:29 AM

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

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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

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