Taking the Long View: Environmental Sustainability and Delay of Gratification

Changing human behavior to support environmental sustainability will often require delaying gratification of consumptive goals. This article reviews findings from the delay of gratification and temporal discounting literatures, examining the implications of these results for environmental behavior‐change goals and programs. Evidence indicates that the ability to delay gratification is strongly influenced by the salience and difficulty of immediate versus delayed goals, so context management is vital to facilitate long‐term environmental goals. The influence of belief on long‐term goal attainment and goal framing also suggests a role for targeting individual beliefs and skills in education programs.