20 research outputs found
NUDGING PEOPLE TO PAY CO2 OFFSETS â THE EFFECT OF ANCHORS IN FLIGHT BOOKING PROCESSES
Carbon-offset donations provide a way to mitigate the environmental damage caused by carbon emissions from aviation, but the number of fliers who choose this option is low. Information systems can support environmentally friendly decision-making in the context of carbon-offset payments. In this research in progress, we describe the research background and a prototypical online environment we developed to conduct a series of online experiments with a variety of ânudgesâ to promote environmentally friendly decisions. We present the results of an experiment with 150 participants, which show that proposing higher levels of default payments (presented as a slide bar) on an online flight-booking platform significantly increases the amount of carbon-offset payments. Our research contributes to the emergent body of knowledge on green information systems and behavioural economics in IS and has important practical implications, as the results may help airlines and travel agents design online flight-booking processes such that more people decide in favour of offsetting the carbon emissions caused by their air travel
Sustainability by Default? Nudging Carbon Offsetting Behavior in E-Commerce
The continuous rise of e-commerce and the resulting global transportation activities lead to an increased environmental load, specifically in the form of carbon emissions. While carbon offset donations offer the potential to mitigate the ecological harm, these voluntary options are not yet prevalent among e-commerce customers. Prior research has shown that information systems (IS) can be utilized to encourage more sustainable behavior by digitally nudging people into offsetting their carbon emissions. Therefore, this study intends to examine the influence of defaults on carbon offsetting in e-commerce checkout processes. A digital experiment with 125 participants revealed that higher default donation values significantly increase peopleâs carbon offset contributions in an e-commerce checkout process. Participants in the treatment group (high default) donated, on average, 33 percent more for carbon offsetting compared to the control group (low default). As a result, this research contributes to the fields of behavioral economics in IS, digital nudging as well as green IS and has valuable implications for IS practitioners and designers
Combined Digital Nudging to Leverage Public Transportation Use
The urgency of global climate change is becoming increasingly evident, but current mobility patterns in developed countries continue to cause severe environmental damage. Therefore, developed countries need to change their mobility patterns fundamentally, such as modal changes to public transportation instead of private car use. Digital nudging in IT-enabled mobility applications is a novel and promising way to influence modal changes to public transportation. In this study, we conduct an online experiment with 183 participants in which they are being nudged toward public transportation trip options. Our results show that combining two different digital nudges significantly affects the choice of public transportation options. By contrast, single nudges do not lead to significant changes in the choice of public transportation trips. With our findings, we contribute to the research stream of digital nudging and the transportation literature and provide insights for practice to address the adverse effects of current mobility patterns
Nudged to Win: Designing Robo-Advisory to Overcome Decision Inertia
Decision inertia is a serious problem in financial decision-making and thus a challenge for decision support systems. We discuss recent findings and review antecedents and consequences of decision inertia from a psychological perspective. We use these insights to develop IT-based methods designed to overcome decision inertia using psychologically optimized financial decision support systems. Furthermore, we propose an experimental study to evaluate the design features of such a system. Our work is a first step in designing adaptive decision support systems that detect situations in which the user is prone to decision inertia and react by adapting interface elements appropriately that might otherwise exacerbate decision inertia â for a specific user in a specific decision situation
Green Nudges: How to Induce Pro-Environmental Behavior Using Technology
To avoid the detrimental consequences of global warming, digital nudges were recognized as effective means to steer individual behavior toward sustainability. We investigated the applications, contexts, and outcomes of green digital nudges by conducting a systematic literature review of 64 nudge interventions. We found six distinct types of nudgesâpriming, goal-setting, default, feedback, social reference, and framingâand 18 sustainable target behaviors (e.g., energy conservation). To explain how behavior changes through green nudges, we clustered the identified target behaviors into three behavior change outcomes: (i) altering an existing behavior, (ii) reinforcing an existing behavior, and (iii) forming a new behavior. Based on our findings, we propose guidance for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who seek to design choice architectures that facilitate pro-environmental behavior
Ethical Guidelines for the Construction of Digital Nudges
Under certain circumstances, humans tend to behave in irrational ways, leading to situations in which they make undesirable choices. The concept of digital nudging addresses these limitations of bounded rationality by establishing a libertarian paternalist alternative to nudge users in virtual environments towards their own preferential choices. Thereby, choice architectures are designed to address biases and heuristics involved in cognitive thinking. As research on digital nudging has become increasingly popular in the Information Systems community, an increasing necessity for ethical guidelines has emerged around this concept to safeguard its legitimization in distinction to e.g. persuasion or manipulation. However, reflecting on ethical debates regarding digital nudging in academia, we find that current conceptualizations are scare. This is where on the basis of existing literature, we provide a conceptualization of ethical guidelines for the design of digital nudges, and thereby aim to ensure the applicability of nudging mechanisms in virtual environments
A Socio-Ecological-Technical Perspective: How has Information Systems Contributed to Solving the Sustainability Problem
This literature review extends the dominant view of Information Systems (IS) as socio-technical. We establish a novel view of IS as socio-ecological-technical systems to steer and unite IS research and scholarship to co-create digitally transformed sustainable futures. Without a commitment to reducing carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2e), we will reach a tipping point leading to large-scale, dangerous, and irreversible impacts on climate, human liveability, and survivability. Digital technology can potentially mediate human activities to reduce CO2e, but its production, utilisation, and disposal are multiple sources of CO2e. In response to the conference theme âCo-creating Sustainable Digital Futuresâ, this paper systematically reviews the IS research over the last twelve years from the socioecological- technical and Environmentally Sustainable Digital Transformation frameworks, with a focus on CO2e. Our holistic approach reveals emerging themes, current gaps and research opportunities, thus contributing to IS knowledge building and proposing future studies in this socio-ecological-technical domain
Status Quo, Critical Reflection, and the Road Ahead of Digital Nudging in Information Systems Research: A Discussion with Markus Weinmann and Alexey Voinov
Research on digital nudging has become increasingly popular in the information systems (IS) community. In this paper, we overview the current progress of, critically reflect on, and discuss further research on digital nudging in IS. To do so, we reviewed the literature and interviewed Markus Weinmann from Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, one of the first scholars who introduced digital nudging to the IS community, and Alexey Voinov, Director of the Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living at University of Technology Sydney. We uncovered a gap between what we know about what constitutes digital nudging and how we can actually put consequent requirements into practice. In this context, the original nudging concept bears inherent challenges about, for example, the focus on individualsâ welfare, which, thus, also apply to digital nudging. Moreover, we need to better understand how nudging in digital choice environments differs from that in the offline world. To further distinguish itself from other fields that already tested various nudges in many different domains, digital nudging research in IS may benefit from a design science perspective in order to go beyond testing effectiveness and provide specific design principles for the different types of digital nudges
Who can be nudged? Examining nudging effectiveness in the context of need for cognition and need for uniqueness
In the last decade, there has been a growing research focus on the subtle modifications of choice architecture that have strong effects on consumer behavior and are subsumed under the term nudging. There is still little research, however, on how different nudges influence individuals with different personality characteristics. An experimental online shopping scenario is used to test whether a customer\u27s Need for Cognition and Need for Uniqueness moderate the effectiveness of two of the most prominent nudgesâdefaults and social influence. Two experiments with samples stratified by age, gender, and education (total N = 1,561) reveal that defaults and social influence have the predicted impact on a customer\u27s decision. Across both studies, nudge effectiveness was partially impacted by Need for Cognition and not impacted at all by Need for Uniqueness. These findings imply that both types of nudges are strong and robust techniques to influence consumer decisionâmaking and are effective across different levels of consumer\u27s Need for Cognition or Need for Uniqueness