Nudging – A promising tool for sustainable consumption behaviour?

Abstract

Success of strategies for solving problems of climate change, resource efficiency and environmental impacts increasingly depend on whether changes in public behaviour can and will supplement the technical solutions available to date. A renewed perspective on existing policy tools and potential strategies for behaviour change are entering public debate that have implications for behaviour of individuals, but that also raise critical questions about the role of the government in the society and transition to sustainability.The guiding question is whether it is possible to help individuals make better decisions for themselves and society at large by overcoming limitations of human cognitive capacity and behavioural biases? In order to answer these questions, this article 1) analyses existing academic knowledge on nudging and choice architecture; 2) investigates lessons about effectiveness of applied nudging tools and approaches in consumption domains of energy use in the home, food and mobility; 3) discusses opportunities and limitations for devising more successful nudges in the three consumption domains; and 4) outlines critical issues concerning the legitimacy of nudging.The article shows that lately applications of behavioural sciences and behavioural economics, such as nudge, have been helping policy makers in different countries and sectors to more systematically integrate behavioural insights into policy design and implementation. However, the size of the effects of policy interventions and the actual outcomes of interventions in different contexts are very diverse. Results from one experiment cannot be indiscriminately generalised to a different context or to a wider population. The problem is the complexity of human behaviour and the diversity of factors that influence it. Despite that, nudging is a useful strategy for inducing changes in context-specific behaviour. Nudge tools are seen as a complement to the traditional policy instruments rather than as a substitute for laws and regulations and economic tools. The article is based on the project funded by the Swedish EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) that resulted in a report “Nudging. Advancing Swedish policy making with academic insights and practical experiences of changing behaviour” (Mont et al., 2014), which served as an input to the Swedish EPA' recommendations to the Swedish Government on policy measures for sustainable consumption (Naturvårdsverket, 2014).