As behavioral economics has become more widespread, it has had a growing number of applications, not least of which has been in trying to nudge us to adopt more environmentally friendly behaviors. One of the more famous applications was the use of social comparisons on energy bills to encourage more prudent energy usage.
New research, undertaken by the RFF CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE), explores how our general desire to conform to what others do can affect our energy consumption.
The researchers used a randomized control trial to examine electrical energy consumption in households. One group was sent a document showing how their energy consumption compared to that of other households. The document contained positive messages for those who were more efficient.
Changing behavior
The results highlight how influential such comparisons can be in changing consumer behavior. For instance, those consumers who found out they were using more energy than the norm were among those to achieve the largest decrease in energy consumption.
By contrast, however, those who were already doing well achieved less impressive reductions upon receipt of the letter that showed that they were already above the norm. For these people, the researchers believe the messaging needs to be further strengthened so that the virtuosity of their actions is reinforced, even in the face of apparent indifference from their peers.
The researchers believe that their findings provide important insights for the deployment of behavioral science-based campaigns that aim to induce optimal behaviors.
An imperfect science
Of course, such behavioral interventions are no guarantee of success, as research from Queen Mary University of London reminds us that such interventions actually fail far more often than they succeed.
The researchers examined a wide range of failed behavioural interventions in areas such as healthcare and taxation. The analysis reveals that the chances of an intervention working are somewhat hit and miss across the board, but they did nonetheless find that certain types of intervention appeared to have a higher failure rate.
The researchers assessed 65 articles that were published between 2008 and 2019, all of which identified failed behavioural interventions. The analysis revealed eight different types of failure, including some where the intervention actually made things worse.
The most common kind of intervention to result in failure involved social comparisons. These interventions usually involve providing people with information about the behavior of their peers to try and encourage similar behaviors.
“Our analysis provides the first attempt to systematically examine behavioural interventions that fail,” the researchers explain. “We have shown that failures are quite common and can occur with nudges applied in any type of setting. We found that there are different types of failures, from interventions that simply don’t achieve any behavioural change, to those that achieve negative changes such as backfire effects.”
