Default delivery option nudges consumer to ship greener

What unsustainable behavior needs to change:

The increasing CO2 emissions from e-commerce deliveries presents a pressing environmental concern. If consumers decided to have their online order delivered to a pick-up point instead of at home, this could reduce up to 33% of CO2 emissions.

However, consumer decision-making is influenced by the mental overload and existing habits around online shopping. Consumers often multitask while shopping online (e.g., checking social media, e-mail, or news). This high cognitive load likely makes them go for the path of least resistance, such as the default or habitual choice.
To overcome this obstacle, the team designed four nudges and conducted testing via an randomised controlled trial with 1,204 participants to determine the most effective approach in altering consumer behaviour.

The Green Nudge:

To overcome this obstacle, the team designed four nudges and conducted testing via an randomised controlled trial with 1,204 participants to determine the most effective approach in altering consumer behaviour.

The four nudges included one default and three information nudges. For the default nudge, the most sustainable delivery method was automatically selected at the check-out page. For the three information nudges, CO2 impact of the delivery options was displayed: either as a green leaf next to the most sustainable option (low complexity), percentage of CO2 reduction for the most sustainable option (medium complexity), and CO2 emissions in grams for each delivery option (high complexity).

The result: The default nudge was more than 5 times as effective at steering consumers towards the most sustainable delivery option (delivered to pick-up point) relative to the control condition. While not effective in terms of shifting to the most sustainable choice, the most complex informational nudge steered consumers away from the two most polluting options – thereby potentially saving more greenhouse gas emissions than the other nudges. 

Results were replicated in a second study among more than 35,000 consumers, showing that a default nudge combined with information about CO2 impact was more than twice as effective than the control condition.