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Changing behavior with normative feedback interventions: A field experiment on curbside recycling
Abstract
This field experiment increased the frequency of curbside recycling among community residents using feedback interventions that targeted personal and social norms. My team of researchers observed curbside recycling behaviors of 605 residents of single-family dwellings for 17 weeks. Groups of contiguous houses were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 experimental conditions: plea, plea plus information, plea plus neighborhood feedback, plea plus individual household feedback, or the control condition. Interventions were implemented using door hangers delivered to each household over a 4-week period. Results showed significant increases from baseline in the frequency of participation and total amount of recycled material for the individual (i.e., personal norm) and the group feedback (i.e., descriptive norm) interventions. None of the interventions altered the amount of contamination observed. These findings are interpreted as consistent with recent research on personal and social norms and suggest a link between behavior change produced through norm activation and behavior change produced through feedback. Implications for research and public policy are discussed.
... We had a large study sample of over 2,300 administrative leaders from a range of healthcare settings and designed a study protocol using best practice randomization and allocation strategies. Our cover letters were developed following an extensive review of the literature on social norms messaging and written behavioral nudges [33,35,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. We also shared the letters and resource website with a range of experts and modified our design and content based on their feedback. ...
Importance
Leaders of healthcare organizations play a key role in developing, prioritizing, and implementing plans to adopt new evidence-based practices. This study examined whether a letter with peer comparison data and social norms messaging impacted healthcare leaders’ decision to access a website with resources to support evidence-based practice adoption.
Methods
Pragmatic, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial completed from December 2019 –June 2020. We randomized 2,387 healthcare leaders from health systems, hospitals, and physician practices in the United States, who had previously responded to our national survey of healthcare organizations, in a 1:1 allocation ratio to receive one of two cover letter versions via postal mail (all) and email (for the 60.6% with an email address), accompanying a report with their survey results. The “nudge” letter included messaging that highlighted how an organization’s results compared to peers using text, color, and icons. Both nudge and control letters included links to a resource website. We interviewed 14 participants to understand how the letter and report impacted behaviors.
Results
Twenty-two of 1,194 leaders (1.8%) sent the nudge letter accessed online resources, compared to 17 of 1193 (1.4%) sent the control letter (p = 0.424). Nine of the 14 interviewed leaders stated that viewing the letter (regardless of version) and accompanying report influenced their decision to take a subsequent action other than accessing the website. Seven leaders forwarded the report or discussed the results with colleagues; two leaders stated that receiving the letter and report resulted in a concrete practice change.
Conclusions
Receiving cover letters with a behavioral nudge did not increase the likelihood that organizational leaders accessed a resource website. Qualitative results suggested that the survey report’s peer comparison data may have been a motivator for prioritizing and delegating implementation activities, but leaders themselves did not access our online resources.
... Alongside the contributions of the use of reliable sources to transmit technical and environmental information, this third phase also emphasizes the relevance of active user participation to alleviate uncertainty. Receiving information passively can have a reduced effect if it is not accompanied by other techniques (Schultz, 1998). In contrast, interactive interventions allow for the expression of opinions and provide spaces for discussion to foster acceptance. ...
Decentralized wastewater treatment systems are a potential solution to the water crisis. However, in addition to advanced technology, successful implementation of these systems requires broad public willingness to use them. This paper presents the results of a three-phase psychosocial intervention with the users of a business building where a decentralized wastewater treatment plant was installed. The intervention, motivated by complaints from users due to their lack of knowledge about the existence of the plant, aimed at understanding and improving users’ perceptions of the building’s decentralized system. In the first phase, we conducted a focus group with a sample of workers (n = 6) to understand their knowledge and perception of the building’s decentralized wastewater treatment system. Once the main obstacles and facilitators were identified, we designed a second phase where a group of employees (n = 46) were exposed to environmental priming to improve attitudes toward the decentralized plant installed in the building. Finally, in the third phase, a bidirectional informative session was proposed, conducted by experts, to another group of workers (n = 25). Findings suggest that implementing specific psychosocial strategies, such as promoting environmental awareness and providing informative sessions, along with incorporating potential users throughout the process, contributes to better acceptance of the decentralized wastewater treatment plant. This work presents a real case in a pilot plant that can serve as a guide for addressing psychosocial resistance in similar projects.
... (Cialdini et al., 1990;Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). For instance, Schultz (1999) conducted a 17-week field experiment with households, suggesting that appropriate norms could enhance recycling behavior. The use of descriptive norms, delivered through group feedback in the experimental groups, resulted in a noteworthy increase in overall recycling behavior. ...
Everyday actions of people across various settings can lead to environmental issues. These automatically performed actions are overlooked in the traditional economics. Therefore, it is crucial to identify and understand pro-environmental behaviors. On the other hand, behavioral economics offers insights into cognitive constraints affecting these kinds of behaviors and develops nudges that take human beings' limited rationality into account. Therefore the study underscores the significance of nudges as empirical tools in behavioral economics for building a sustainable world and laying the foundation for pro-environmental behaviors. In this context, it examines the emerging significance of nudges in digital settings, analyzing their applications in this domain. Conducting an extensive literature review, this study categorizes pro-environmental behaviors as energy conservation, waste reduction & recycling, and sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption is divided into grocery shopping, travel decisions, fashion & makeup choices. The research makes the importance of behavioral economics apparent by acknowledging the automatic nature of many pro-environmental behaviors and addressing the pervasive attitude-behavior gap. Consequently, by investigating the impact of both physical and digital nudges, this article offers a practical response to empirical evidence on promoting pro-environmental behavior responsible actions.
... Exposure to such norms can manifest through diverse mediums, such as verbal cues or visual representation, and trigger behavioural change (Brekke et al., 2010;Gangl et al., 2022). Previous studies indicate that descriptive social norms are a promising tool to improve pro-environmental behaviour (Abbott et al., 2013;Scalco et al., 2017;Schultz, 1999). In our study, we provide information on the level of households that have acquired free containers for recyclables to prompt introspection. ...
To address the prominent “value‐action gap” within pro‐environmental behaviour, this novel, cross‐sectional study investigated relationships between household food wasting and pro‐environmentalism. Research was undertaken in 11 neighbourhoods across London, Ontario, Canada, including a net‐zero energy neighbourhood. A direct measurement methodology was used to measure household food waste, and a survey was created to measure knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours related to food wasting. Households in the net‐zero energy neighbourhood sent between 2.59 kg and 2.80 kg of food waste to landfill per week, of which 68% was classified as avoidable and the remaining 32% as unavoidable. Households in this neighbourhood sent less total (p < 0.001) and unavoidable (p < 0.001) food waste to landfill than households in “regular” neighbourhoods within the same city. While participants in the net‐zero neighbourhood had strong, self‐reported pro‐environmental worldviews, pro‐environmentalism was not found to be stronger in this neighbourhood compared to the rest of the city. The presence of stronger, self‐reported pro‐environmental worldviews was associated with a decrease in unavoidable food waste generation (p < 0.01). As the first study of its kind, further research is needed to verify the role of pro‐environmentalism in household food wasting in Canada and beyond .
Existing research has developed a plethora of tools for measuring pro-environmental behavior, encompassing scales, individual behavioral paradigms, and group games. These tools predominantly hinge upon the behavioral domain, with the most frequently mentioned areas being conservation, transportation, waste disposal, consumption, and social citizenship behaviors (e.g., donation). However, current measurements of pro-environmental behavior face challenges related to low standardization and limited generalizability of results. These issues primarily stem from the prevailing reliance on measurement paradigms grounded in behavioral domains, neglecting the crucial consideration of behavioral attributes, which constitute the defining and distinguishing characteristics of behavior. Future research could address these by developing standardized measurement tools based on behavioral attributes and validating them through the selection of various real-life behaviors as criteria for validity testing.
Past research has shown that help is provided more frequently to victims whose need is legitimate rather than illegitimate. This study examined three mechanisms through which legitimacy of need might influence helping. Ten to twelve weeks after completing a survey which included measures of attitudes, perceived social norms, and personal (internalized) norms toward welfare, 316 housewives received a telephone appeal to volunteer time for a campaign for increased welfare payments. Legitimacy of need was varied in the appeal, and had the usual impact on volunteering. A significant interaction between legitimacy and personal norms revealed, however, that only those with no strong feelings of personal obligation with respect to aiding welfare recipients were influenced by legitimacy of need. Those with strong personal norms-whether positive toward welfare or negative-were influenced by their own norms but not by the legitimacy of need. Neither attitudes nor perceived social norms had similar mediating effects.
Household curbside recycling behavior was observed in two similar, adjacent cities. In one, all recyclables were mixed together, and in the other, four types of materials were separated. As predicted, the commingled program achieved a higher average weekly participation rate (58% vs. 42%), and more households participated at least once in 8 consecutive weeks (90%o vs. 77%/6). The commingled program also generated more gallons of recyclables (32.1 vs. 5.5 per household per week). In the city with the commingled program, there was a significant level of consistency in the frequency of household recycling participation across a 2-year period (r= .45); overall participation remained over 90%h for that period. High, medium, and low socioeconomic residential areas in both cities displayed some significant differences in participation and quantity recycled. Surprisingly, areas with volunteer recycling block leaders did not have higher levels of participation than comparable areas without block leaders.
This study examined the effects of three community interventions that rely on socially mediated consequences, rather than financial incentives, to promote consumer recycling. Households in the commitment-only group signed a letter making a public commitment to recycle and giving permission to publish their names in a local newspaper. The feedback-only group received weekly feedback on pounds of recyclable paper generated by their group. A combined-intervention group received a combination of the two previous interventions. Relative to baseline, the feedback-only and the combined-intervention groups increased the weight of recyclable paper by 25.47% and 40.00%, respectively. In contrast, neither the commitment-only group nor a no-intervention control group showed substantial changes over the same period. The implications of these interventions for developing community-wide recycling programs are discussed.
This study compared the effectiveness of prompts (signs) and posted feedback as litter control strategies in two university cafeterias. Patronage and litter rates were monitored daily throughout the second term of the academic year. Prompts, prompts and posted feedback, and posted feedback were presented sequentially within a multiple baseline across settings experimental design. While litter rates initially declined in the presence of prompts, the addition of posted feedback did not have an additive effect; however, subsequent removal of prompts produced further reductions in litter rates, which were still evident during follow-up 5 weeks later. Results suggest that posted feedback is an effective and inexpensive method of Utter control.
An elementary school recycling program was developed in which students could deliver paper when they arrived at school each day. For a period of eight months, feedback, goal setting and self-recording conditions were evaluated. The largest quantity of paper was recycled during the goal setting condition and the greatest number of students participated when they recorded their own participation. The impact newspaper recycling had on energy consumption was estimated and the advantage of using the school system as an 'agent' for wide scale recycling operations is discussed.
Comments on K. E. Bauman and S. T. Ennett's (see record 1995-01311-001 ) article on peer influence on adolescent drug use, examining their arguments in light of experimental evidence of school-based drug prevention programs based on the social influence (SI) model. The argument that the peer or SI model is overrated and the implication that SI-based prevention programs are misguided are unwarranted.
This review includes an analysis of the 34 environmental education studies published since 1974 that attempted to demonstrate changes in environmentally relevant knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors. The authors divide the studies into two major categories—in-class and out-of-class programs—and critique the studies' findings and methodologies. Although many of the investigations contained methodological difficulties, some of the findings indicate that future research can refine environmental education strategies and curricula.
Empirical knowledge about recycling behavior is needed to inform environmental education efforts and policy proposals. Three dimensions of household recycling behavior (frequency of participation, amount of recyclable materials, and contamination of recyclables by improper material) were observed in 705 households of a suburban residential community over an 8-week period. These dependent variables were predicted by a set of 10 independent variables: recycling knowledge, general environmental concern, community attachment, 3 demographic variables, and 4 specific recycling motivation factors. A different pattern of predictor variables was found for each of the dependent variables, and the results suggest that many of the variables that predicted recycling behavior in past research have weaker relationships in current, more convenient, curbside programs.