How Pride Triggered by Pro-environmental Technology Adoption Spills Over into Conservation Behaviours: A Social Business Application

•By leveraging spillovers, social businesses can meet both social and financial goals.•Examined the spillovers of pro-environmental technology adoption.•Pride as a result of pro-environmental technology adoption spills over to conservation behaviours.•Technology-adoption pride is greater for different domain conservation behaviours than similar ones.•Social businesses can use appeals to pride to promote their products and maximise their social goals. Based on a new social business initiative, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions in China with the development of a new solar photovoltaic/thermal system that promises higher overall energy efficiency, lower costs, and better monitoring and control settings than existing systems, this study examines how pride triggered by environmentally-friendly technology adoption spills over into conservation behaviours. The study used an online survey of 163 Chinese customers and a pride-inducing methodology to investigate how pride in purchasing pro-environmental technology could lead to positive spillovers. A Partial Least Squares approach to Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the results. Feelings of pride elicited by the intentions to purchase the novel technology positively affect subsequent behaviours of reducing energy consumption by other means (same domain), as well as recycling and reusing materials (different domain). Pride appeals can be leveraged by social businesses as by definition they focus on the social good and, according to our findings, pride-inducing messages enhance the impacts of the pro-environmental technology adoption. Such spillovers can be beneficial to society, thus allowing social businesses to satisfy social and financial goals at the same time.