Richard Conniff: Promoting Greener Choices | e360

Let’s say that every time you ride public transit, your fare card with its unique number also buys you a ticket to a periodic $50,000 lottery. Your number can turn up any day of the week, but you only win if you rode public transit that day. Think you might start taking public transit more often?

It’s an idea straight out of behavioral economics, an unconventional field of research that examines how human nature really works and uses it to shape the choices people make. ...

For instance, in one study, researchers asked each of four groups of utility customers to cut energy consumption for a different reason — the good of the planet, the well-being of future generations, the financial savings, or because their neighbors were doing it. By comparing electric meter readings, the researchers determined that only the last message had any effect, eliciting a 10 percent drop in consumption. A subsequent study found that when electric bills compared a customer’s energy consumption against the neighborhood average, profligate customers scaled back. In fact, the social norm was so powerful that thrifty customers also responded, by splurging. The weirdly effective fix was to add a smiley face to the thrifty bills — like a gold star from teacher.

“People don’t just want to conserve energy,” says Arizona State University psychologist Robert B. Cialdini, “they want to be acknowledged for conserving energy.”