ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1629839
This article is part of the Research TopicUnderstanding Psychological Drivers of Food Consumption and Waste: Pathways to Sustainable ChoicesView all articles
The Leverage Role of Feedback Framing in Promoting the Spillover Effect of Idle Item Recycling
Provisionally accepted
- School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
In response to the growing concerns over resource wastage and environmental pollution caused by improper disposal of idle items, information interventions have been implemented to encourage consumers to recycle these items. While such interventions primarily aim to promote idle item recycling, they may also trigger spillover effects either enhancing (positive spillover) or diminishing (negative spillover) additional environmental or non-environmental virtuous behaviors. This research investigates the impact of feedback framing on the spillover effects of consumers' idle item recycling behavior through three scenario experiments. The results demonstrated that compared with highlighting the positive outcomes or benefits (positive framing), feedback information focused on preventing negative consequences or costs (negative framing) would strengthen the positive spillover of consumers' idle item recycling behavior. And spillover effects are more likely to occur from idle item recycling to other low-cost pro-environmental behaviors. Furthermore, negative framing enhances consumers' perceived impact and pride regarding their recycling actions, which subsequently amplifies the spillover effect. However, this effect is contingent on the level of goal progress; negative framing is effective only when goal progress is low, not when it is high. This study advances the theoretical understanding of feedback framing's role in behavioral spillovers and offers practical insights for organizations and enterprises as they attempt to effectively intervene in consumers' idle item recycling behavior.
Keywords: Spillover effect, idle item recycling, Feedback framing, Perceived Impact, pride, goal progress
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guo, Zhu and Wu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tingting Guo, School of Business Administration, Liaoning Technical University, Fuxin, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.