Japan’s Green Carb0n Club Rewards Eco-Friendly Living
Developed with the city of Kawasaki, the Green Carb0n Club app gamifies sustainability, rewarding eco-friendly actions through Japan’s familiar point card system.
Responsible Travel Program: Practical Sustainability for Polish Tourism
A free, user-friendly tool for small accommodation owners, offering step-by-step certification and actionable steps towards more sustainable practices.
Cutting eCommerce Returns: Reducing the Cost of Convenience
Leveraging 40+ psychological mechanisms to encourage eco-friendly choices in online fashion shopping, reducing returns as well as environmental impact.
Transforming “Petrol Heads” into Electric Vehicle enthusiasts
How Porsche, a brand known for its combustion-driven heritage, used nudging to encourage employees to choose electric vehicles for their next company car.
Value-Activation Nudge: Encouraging meat-eaters to reflect on animal welfare
Simply asking, “Do you consider animal welfare important?” before making food choices can motivate animal-loving meat-eaters to choose vegetarian options.
Nudging energy shift: Behavioural-informed campaign spurs first-time switches
A German energy provider successfully convinces people to switch their energy supplier for the first time by leveraging Hamburg’s most iconic landmarks.
Sensory priming: How a scent can lead to cleaner behaviour
Clever Dutch intervention leverages the familiar scent of lemon, renowned for its association with cleanliness, to reduce waste near underground containers.
The life extending fruit stickers that redefine freshness
Colombian changemakers predict a six-day extension in the life of fruits and vegetables through the implementation of stickers with serving meal suggestions
Breaking open defecation habits at Kumbh Mela festival
As part of the „Clean India Campaign,“ India is fighting the problem of open defecation. At the 2019 festival, they tackled this issue using behavioural nudges
Visuals of untouched nature can reduce littering in communal spaces
An Austrian field experiment identified the most effective interventions to reduce littering in common waste disposal areas, testing four different methods.
Bordeaux 2050: The wine from the future that tastes like Global Warming
An innovative campaign makes the future consequences of climate change tangible by showcasing its impact on one of France’s most famous cultural icons.
Real-time feedback via Amphiro’s smart shower meter promotes energy conservation
Many people don’t actually know how much water and energy they use during their often daily shower. A field experiment in 6 Swiss hotels showed that smart shower meters with real-time feedback can reduce energy and water consumption.
Making the CO2 footprint of food choices salient, makes people chose the better alternative
Customers at one of the largest cafeterias in Munich ordered food from a menu that gave them additional information on the sustainability of their choices. When faced with the negative cost, the individuals daily CO2 budget, and the amount of CO2 emission that each food option presented, buying behaviour changed. Customers bought less CO2 intensive choices, like less meat and fish, resulting in almost 10% less CO2 emission.
Providing feedback with a smart packaging solution by Mimica
Every year we waste tons of food because the expiry date on the packaging says so. Mimica wants to change that with a temperature-sensitive, dynamic expiry label that provides accurate, real-time feedback of the product’s freshness.
Opower’s neighbour comparisons. Saving energy by making sustainable peer action salient.
When our peers take actions to live more sustainable, we’re more likely to follow suit. Our social imitation was nudged by Utility companies by comparing our own energy consumption with that of our neighbours.
With the climate crisis, humanity faces one of the biggest challenges of all time. We simply cannot afford to keep going as we have over the last several decades. We need to change – but change in itself is hard.
If you ask people whether they support sustainable behaviour or “green(er)” choices as a means to save our planet, and thus keep it inhabitable for future generations – a majority would certainly say yes.
However, as anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out years ago: “What people say, what people do and and what people say they do are entirely different things.” People may support the good cause, but still like their daily meat, their big combustion SUVs and their long hot showers – these (immediate) pleasures take priority over being more “green”. This is known as the “attitude-behavior-gap” or “intention-action-gap”.
The Green Nudges that we will showcase are meant to trigger real action: sometimes immediate and sometimes at a later stage when people are faced with a decision and still have that nudge in mind. Not all of them have data available to back up the effectiveness. But we understand them as inspiration for institutions, decision makers or individuals for a greater good. For real action.
The idea of nudging is not new and there are already quite a few nudges surfacing. But we have the feeling that the majority of them are hidden inside theoretical abstracts and scientific publications.
Our objective with our Green Nudges series is to make these examples more accessible to a general audience and most certainly much easier to understand.
Meet the Team
Matthias Höppner
Editor-in-chief
20 years ago, when Matthias first read Bill Buford’s book „Among the thugs“ – an impressive piece of social research about football hooligans and the power of the crowd – he was instantly hooked by the psychological phenomenons that make people tick. Ever since, he wanted to understand how people make decisions and what drives their behaviour. For many years, he tried to use this knowledge to influence purchase decisions, while working for many different companies as a marketing strategist. But increasingly, he’s interested in using that experience to influence people to make more sustainable choices.
Kassandra is a Creative Consultant, Biodesigner and Speculative Artist. With her expertise in nature-inspired social and sustainable design, she mentors start-ups and SMEs to transform their design products, services and systems. Not only does her guidance help companies generate circular designs, she also empowers them to push the boundaries of their storytelling resonance: encouraging interconnected and synergetic behaviors between people and their respective ecosystems. In her studio practice, she realizes playful and immersive experiences – ushering society towards proactive, inclusive and regenerative futures.
Johannes is a visual storyteller with work ranging from illustrations to design and art. His particular forté is in depicting visions of desirable futures and the roadmaps to how we could get there. As a communication designer, Johannes supports brands and stories on a mission to create a thriving planet. That’s why his core topics are sustainable and social impact, future design, and science communication. With his Green Nudges illustrations, Johannes skillfully disseminates the essence of often very theoretical behavioral insights; into accessible visual interpretations, approachable for a wide range of audiences.