Article written by Lisette Hafkamp Ibanez (CEE-M, Inrae), Gilles Grolleau (ESSCA), Simon Mathex (CEE- M, Inrae), Sophie Clot (University of Reading) for The Conversation.

Many of us are aware that adopting a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle has become a necessity. However, we don't act in an ecologically virtuous way in all circumstances (far from it), and, above all, we allow ourselves, sometimes unconsciously, "deviations" after we've done something good for the environment.

This is what we call the "moral compensation effect", which you can discover in this new article in The Conversation's "Our Lives, How We Live" series.

So much for your carbon footprint, you finally decide to buy those delicious avocados flown in from the other side of the world, or worse, to fly to that dream destination, telling yourself that it's well deserved, after all the efforts you've made for the environment during the year - sustainable purchases, biking to work, sorting your waste...

Environmental hypocrisy? Not necessarily. It's called moral compensation. First observed in psychology, this behavioral bias refers to the fact that a previous "good deed" can relieve you of guilt and encourage you to carry out a "bad" one.

Moral compensation, often unconscious, is an internal arbitration carried out by the individual. To understand this, let's use a banking metaphor: let's imagine that we have a kind of "moral account" on which we record good and bad deeds as credits and debits, the basic principle being to keep the account in the black, or at least in balance.

Buying 0% yoghurt, but indulging in over-sweetened snacks, indulging in an ice-cold soda after a workout, taking the elevator after biking to work... This compensation is found in a series of efforts and small rewards that we give ourselves without necessarily realizing it, but which can ultimately threaten the achievement of our initial goal.

There are numerous studies documenting this bias in the environmental field.

Researchers at Nanjing University in China conducted an experiment involving 80 individuals who randomly divided their purchases between an online store selling conventional products and one selling organic products.

They observed that participants who had purchased organic products consumed more water in a subsequent experimental task than those who had purchased conventional products. Moreover, these same individuals also reported a lower intention to engage in actions in favor of the environment.

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