The questions were answered by Paula Salo, Professor of Psychology and Director of the CLIMATE NUDGE project, who specialises in health psychology and approaches to climate change mitigation based on behavioural science.
1. What is the CLIMATE NUDGE project?
The CLIMATE NUDGE project uses behavioural science to develop ways to guide people towards choices that benefit climate change mitigation. Our two branches of research involve reducing emissions from transport and enhancing forest carbon sinks.
We seek solutions that simplify sustainable transport choices, such as for commuting to work and school, and help forest owners make climate-friendly decisions about managing their forests. We also assess the ethical, economic and health impacts of these choices.
2. What is a nudge?
A nudge refers to changing choice architecture so that a particular choice is easier to make. Choice architecture can be any environment or circumstance where people make choices or decisions. The central idea of a nudge is that the individual's ability to choose otherwise is maintained and that there is no significant change in economic incentives to the individual for choosing otherwise.
3. How are nudges visible in people's daily lives?
People encounter all sorts of nudges in their everyday lives, although they are not always necessarily called nudges. For example, in lunch restaurants, a salad bar usually precedes the hot dishes. This guides people to eat more vegetables.
One of the most effective nudges is changing the default setting. At many workplaces, printers have been set to two-sided printing as a default. This saves paper, but the employee can change the settings and print one-sided if they wish.
4. What kind of climate nudges do you plan and implement in the project?
Research shows that a positive first-hand experience of using a product or service increases the likelihood of purchase and use. Building on this idea, we are working with a car service company to offer customers who bring their car in for service an opportunity to use an electric bike for the duration of the repairs.
In forestry, we have used information sharing and social benchmarking to guide owners of peatland forests to apply ash fertilisation on their land. We have also collaborated with the Finnish Forest Centre on the Metsään.fi online service, experimenting with modifications to the digital choice architecture so that forest owners can more easily select forest management practices that enhance the forest’s carbon sink capabilities.
5. Nudges aim to influence people's choices. Are they ethically and socially acceptable?
In general, people accept nudging for steering behaviour. In different countries, the percentage of people who accept the practice varies from around 50% to over 70%.
There are several ethical questions and challenges related to nudges and these are being studied in our project by researchers from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Turku. To make sure that the nudges are ethically excellent, it is important to consider, among other things, their legitimacy, transparency and effectiveness. Often, the justification for nudging is to steer people towards an alternative that is beneficial to themselves. Climate nudges can be justified through climate change mitigation, but it is important to know which actions are actually climate-friendly.
There are also many other ethical issues involved in nudging. For example, nudging for acquiring an electric car can be seen as unequal or unfair if not everyone can afford an electric car. On the other hand, the electric car nudge can be justified by the fact that high-income earners produce more emissions, so they can be considered to have more responsibility in taking climate action. At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that, although an electric car can reduce emissions when it replaces a car with a combustion engine, there are other more climate-friendly modes of transport.
6. How aware are people of nudging?
In terms of transparency, it is important that people know that their actions are being guided by nudging. Knowing that you are being nudged does not necessarily reduce the effectiveness of the guidance. In terms of effectiveness, the nudge must be judged on whether it is effective enough to achieve the set objectives, so that the end result is not just "greenwashing".
7. How does nudging affect people's well-being?
In general, the starting point for nudging is to guide people towards a choice that is beneficial to themselves. This is where nudging differs from marketing, for example, which uses many of the same mechanisms related to the modification of the choice architecture or the way people typically process information.
However, many climate actions also improve our health. For example, in the CLIMATE NUDGE research project, we have considered how nudging could be used to guide people towards more sustainable commuting. We have also studied the health effects of active commuting, such as walking or cycling, which is linked to better perceived health, improved work ability, and fewer sick leaves.
8. Are nudges economically viable?
It is generally thought that nudges are minor modifications to the choice architecture and thus inexpensive to implement. When successful, it can indeed work in this way. In practice, however, developing effective and efficient nudges can require a great deal of work. The greatest economic benefit from nudges arises when behavioural science tools and insights are incorporated into ongoing service development.
9. How well do the nudges work?
The effectiveness of the nudges depends on many factors and the same intervention can affect people differently. For example, an international study found that nudging people to use public transport worked well for those who already used it, but annoyed people who did not.
The challenge in studying nudges is measuring the changes in people’s behaviour. Often, behaviour has to be measured using methods that require the research subject to do something, such as answering a questionnaire. This adds to the inconvenience for the subjects and at the same time undermines the idea of nudging as a means of facilitating the individual's choices. In addition, nudges are in practice often part of a larger effort to change behaviour, so the impact of a single intervention cannot be easily separated from the overall effect.
10. Why are climate nudges important?
When successful, climate nudges can be easy, insightful, even fun ways to help people make better choices for the climate and environment. While the effectiveness of individual nudges is often poor, a well-designed choice architecture can at its best be scaled up to a large number of people, thereby increasing the effectiveness of climate nudging. Since the central idea of nudging is that the person retains the possibility to choose another option, those being nudged are not forced to change their behaviour. However, nudges can only complement other climate measures, not replace them.
Text: Liisa Kallio
Photos: Hanna Oksanen
Translation: Mari Ratia
