Minorities with morally-motivated practices have been argued to slow down the sustainable transition they envision by creating exclusive identities. The present study examines how ecovillages influence those living around them, depending on their displayed moral motivations and displayed identification with the local region. We expect higher displayed (compared to moderate, or mixed) moral motivation of the ecovillage to reduce local residents’ affective, cognitive, and behavioural acceptance of the ecovillage, due to lower experienced shared identity. As such, we expect that a stronger displayed local region (compared to eco-village) identification by the eco-village, can counter the negative effects of displayed moral motivation. We tested these hypotheses with two experiments (Ntotal) = 1554, and aim to externally validate these findings with a correlational field study. Although results varied between experiments, we generally find, in line with our predictions, that higher displayed moral motivation (compared to moderate or mixed) negatively affected eco-village acceptance (and perceived shared identity in Study 1). Furthermore, higher displayed identification with the local region increased shared identity (and eco-village acceptance in Study 2), and countered some of the negative effects of displayed moral motivation.
Together, these findings show the risks of overly moral argumentation and the benefits of displaying shared identity to increase the ability of environmental minorities to instigate broader social change.