“Sharing is Caring”: About Personal Values Driving Environmentally Friendly Behavior

Carsharing could be one opportunity to counteract the problem of raising CO₂ emissions. Despite its positive environmental effects, Carsharing still has potential for greater usage by the broad public. It can be assumed that advertisement plays an important role by providing Carsharing advantages. By combining an eye tracking analysis with standardized interviews of 39 German consumers, we evaluate if consumers who consider themselves as “sustainable” perceive sustainable communication (slogans and icons) differently from those consumers without a “sustainable attitude.” The Mann-Whitney U test for statistical analysis did not find any significant differences between the two groups of biospheric/altruistic and egoistic/hedonistic persons. Therefore, findings reject the use of adapted communication strategies for specific target groups regarding Carsharing. Furthermore, results indicate the importance of advertisement elements that symbolize biospheric values.