What are Nudges?
Let’s begin with a simple fact: people make inconsistent decisions. What was initially mere intuition has since been validated by over 40 years of academic research on the decision-making process.
Through a better understanding of human behaviour in both its rational and irrational dimensions, it becomes possible to take more effective action to modify behaviour as we wish. In their popular book Nudge – Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (2008), Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggested that if a particular unfortunate behavioural or decision-making pattern is the result of cognitive boundaries, biases, or habits, this pattern may be “nudged” toward a better option by integrating insights about the very same kind of boundaries, biases, and habits into the choice architecture surrounding the behaviour – i.e. the physical, social, and psychological aspects of the contexts that influence and in which our choices take place – in ways that promote a more preferred behaviour rather than obstruct it.
“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not.” (Thaler & Sunstein 2008, p. 6)
(Credit: BVA)
Self-Nudges
There are many kinds of nudges, but in our project, the focus will be only on the Self-Nudges. The idea behind self-nudging is that people can design and structure their own environment in a way that makes it easier for them to make the decisions they want. In this case, people will be fully aware of what they want to achieve through the application of the nudges, and all information will be presented to them in a transparent way.
Self-nudges require a high level of self-reflection and awareness between one’s own behaviour and the external factors that shape it (Nova & Lades). For our part, we have considered the option of using self-nudging as a tool that can be useful to help us in a change of behaviour and commitment to a better and more sustainable future for all (Hall, 2016). Thus, it seeks to encourage individuals to live in a more sustainable way, encouraging self-nudges to be used as a tool to identify certain behaviours that can be modified so that the citizen is aware of all the information surrounding the environment, the advantages and disadvantages, and how this can be carried out in an easy and simple way, where, in addition, if this does not go well it is easily remediable.
Self-Nudge Types
Self-Nudges may be classified into four broad categories.
Instances of all four categories of nudges, together with other types of interventions, will be designed and tested in the SDGilevel project that have been designed to help end-users change a specific behaviour they choose to change in their daily life in order to contribute to the SDGs.