When it comes to washing habits, the fear of being perceived as dirty often wins out over the desire to act in an environment-friendly way. And the more inclined people are to feel disgusted, the more they wash clothes.
- This is shown by a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, that examined the driving forces behind laundering behaviours and provides new tools for how people's environmental impact can be reduced.
WASHING CLOTHES: Today, people wash clothes more than ever before, and the emissions from laundering have never been higher.
- Some of the reasons are that we use each garment fewer times before throwing them in the laundry bin, technological advances have made it easier and cheaper to do laundry, and access to washing machines has increased.
- Of the global emissions of microplastics, 16–35% come from washing synthetic fibres. In addition, detergents contribute to eutrophication, and the use of energy and water for washing also has environmental impacts.
THE FOCUS: The research took a new, unexplored approach to washing habits: to examine the underlying mechanisms of excessive laundering from a psychological perspective.
- The study focused on two driving forces that affect washing behaviour: (1) environmental identity — how strongly we identify with the group of environmentally conscious people, and (2) how inclined we are to have feelings of disgust.
THE DRIVING FORCES: People are constantly faced with different goal conflicts.
- There is a conflict between the desire to reduce one's washing to save the environment and the fear of being perceived as a disgusting person with unclean clothes. Disgust is a strong psychological and social driving force.
- The study shows that the higher the sensitivity to disgust, the more people wash, regardless of whether environmental identity is valued highly. The feeling of disgust wins out over environmental awareness.
- The fact that disgust drives behaviour so strongly has several bases. The research has described disgust as an evolutionary conditioned emotion, which functions as a protection against infection or dangerous substances. In addition to this, the feeling of disgust is closely related to the feeling of shame and can thus also have an influence in social contexts.
- This has implications for washing behaviour.
WRONG CAMPAIGNS: The study highlights that today's campaigns and messages to get people to act in an environment-friendly way have the wrong starting point, since they often fail to take into account the psychological aspects behind people's behaviour.
- The questions "How do we get people to wash less," and "How do we do it in a more environmentally friendly way?" are misplaced, since the focus should instead be on the indirect behaviour which leads to the actual washing. It might be subtle, but a better question is instead "How do we get people to generate less laundry, specifically laundry that needs to be cleaned by a washing machine?"
- One of the study's main suggestions is to encourage people to use clothes more often before they end up in the laundry basket.
THE RESEARCH: The study, ‘Pro-environmental behaviour is undermined by disgust sensitivity: the case of excessive laundering’, has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
- The study has been led by researchers from the Division of Environmental Systems Analysis at Chalmers in collaboration with the research group for Decision Making, Environmental, Economic and Political Psychology at the University of Gothenburg.
- The article is part of a larger project, The future of the laundry, which is carried out at HSB Living Lab and is led by Chalmers in collaboration with The Research Hub by Electrolux Professional.
- The study is based on two different surveys, with about 1,000 respondents per survey. The surveys asked questions about washing behaviour, habits, cleanliness norms, disgust sensitivity, and shame, among other things. All data was collected in collaboration with the knowledge and analysis company Novus. The participants were selected to constitute a representative sample of Sweden's population.
What they said:
Even though the machines have become more energy-efficient, it is how often we choose to wash that has the greatest impact on the climate -- and we have never done as much washing as we do today. At the same time, most of us seem to be uninterested in changing our laundering behaviours to reduce climate impact.
— Erik Klint (Lead Author)
Doctoral student, Division of Environmental Systems Analysis
Chalmers University of Technology
This study is part of a more extensive thesis that goes beyond the usual research framework for LCA (lifecycle assessments) and has made it possible to create more holistic understanding of how we wash and what drives washing behaviour. The direct result we hope for is to contribute to reduced environmental impact from laundry, but it is possible that the research can be generalised to other areas where behaviour and technology interact.
— Gregory Peters (Co-Author)
Professor of Quantitative Sustainability Assessment
Chalmers University of Technology
