We are thrilled to announce that the paper “Nudging Pro-Environmental Behavior - The influence of decision-making styles on the effectiveness of digital nudges” has been accepted for publication in the journal Sustainability. The paper is based on the Master’s thesis by Laura Schaffeld (supervision by Helge Alsdorf) and was now co-authored by Laura Schaffeld, Helge Alsdorf and Frederik Ahlemann.

Sustainability is an international, cross-disciplinary journal of environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings.

The upcoming special issue "Everyday ICT Consumption and Sustainability" – in which the article will be published – concerns the growing need to understand how everyday ICT consumption influences the human–ecosystem equilibrium and seeks to not only involve the individual’s interaction with the technology but also the design, organization, and operation of information systems that are part and parcel of the mundane.

Paper abstract:

The global climate disruption and its negative effects on the plate are becoming increasingly severe. Humans are therefore asked to not only talk about, but also act more environmentally friendly. To investigate if digital nudges can improve the pro-environmental behavior (PEB) of users in online settings, we undertook an experiment. We designed three digital nudges (i.e., a social norm nudge, a salience nudge, and a default nudge) and nudged 1017 international participants with different decision-making styles (DMSs) towards a pro-environmental decision. Our results indicate that the use of the social norm and default nudge lead to a significant PEB increase, and that the avoidant, rational, and spontaneous DMSs seem to moderate the nudges’ effectiveness. Our results underline that the nudge mechanism should be selected depending upon the decision situation and that – also in online spheres – nudges can and should be tailored to user characteristics.