Entries for Nudge blog
Yesterday, we featured a creative nudge in Copenhagen for getting bicyclists to park their bikes in designated spaces. "Bicycle butlers" who oil your chain, pump your tires, and leave you a note kindly asking you to park your bike in the appropriate place next time. The number of illegally parked bikes has dropped by more than two-thirds. Those are impressive results and would-be nudgers should be curious. What's behind that big drop?
One possible explanation is implied in the bike butler project leader Poul Erik Kinimond's comment about the solution. Kinimond said the team wanted to tackle the "problem in a way that wouldn't make people angry because we moved their bicycles." Call this the kill them with kindness explanation. Persuasion with a velvet glove rather than an iron first.
Maybe. The Nudge blog agrees that kindness is doing the persuasive work here, but only indirectly. Kindness works because it's unexpected. To be more specific, unexpected in this situation. What situation is that? Parking. When your vehicle (car, bike, etc.) is parked illegally, what happens? You get a ticket, or a boot, or even towed. Punishment is the predicted outcome. Occasionally, like on Christmas Day or New Years, police officers may have written you a "happy holidays" warning instead of a ticket. If that's ever happened to you, chances are you remember it. Why? Because it was out of the norm, which is exactly what the Copenhagen nudge is.
Exploiting unexpectedness is a powerful strategy for getting people to remember something, a point behavioralists Dan and Chip Heath make in Made to Stick. Think of an unexpected occurrence as akin to a reminder note that continues to pop up in your mind every time you revisit the original situation. What's unique about the Copenhagen example is the free oil lube and air pump. There are some similarities to the world of customer service. The Heath brothers point to the example of Nordstrom's legendary customer service where employees have gone so far as to wrap products a customer bought at another store. The friendly note to park elsewhere next time ties the unexpected oil and air "service gift" to a specific request, putting it back in context of the larger message about appropriate bike parking places. Those two items, the gift and the message, will come together as a package every time that person returns to the metro stop on their bike. They'll think, "Remember that time I parked my bike illegally..."
The lesson of Copenhagen isn't that all cities should start oiling the chains and pumping the tires of illegal bike parkers. It's that more cities should break out of the ticket norm if they want to induce behavioral change.
Tags: bikes
Problem: Copenhagen cyclists who don't park their bikes at assigned bike racks and instead park them in areas frequently needed by emergency vehicles.
Solution: "Bicycle butlers."
If you park your bicycle illegally, the City will move it over to the bike racks. Instead of finger-wagging, they will then oil your chain, pump your tires and leave a little note on your bicycle asking to kindly use the bike racks in the future... When the project started in April they were moving around 150 bicycles a day. Today that number has dropped to between 30 and 50. "It's been a bigger success than I had expected. At the beginning I wasn't keen on rewarding people who parked illegally. The idea was to tackle the problem in a way that wouldn't make people angry because we moved their bicycles," sais (Project Leader Poul Erik) Kinimond.Hat tip: Cheryl Longinotti
Tags: bikes
1) More overconfidence. Spotting drunk people.
2) More calories tomorrow. Calorie counts, that is.
3) More productive employees. Just say thank you to them. Hat tip: Simoleon Sense.
4) More mail. Gmail's inbox gets smarter.
5) More bang for your buck. In Massachusetts, a 30 percent food stamp discount for buying fresh fruits and vegetables. But will the discount be visible enough?
Tags: email, food, health, overconfidence
You're in a car dealership looking to buy a new car. Chances are, you're going to look at the sticker in the backseat window. You know, the one with the fuel efficiency numbers. But you won't look for too long. Say 20-30 seconds, tops. Of the following two labels, which one is going to help you figure out the fuel tank's consequences for the environment and your wallet?
The Environmental Protection Agency hopes you said the first one, which tries to highlight the pocketbook impact better, and adds new details about environmental friendliness. As part of window sticker requirements starting in 2012, the agency is looking to make some changes. The agency is considering swapping the bottom sticker for the top one.
Now consider this sticker, which the EPA is also considering.
The same information that's on the first label is all there, but of course, there's now that giant letter grade that's supposed to sum up fuel and environmental specs for the car in comparison to all other models (cars, trucks, and SUVS) on the market. Reports the NYT:
The Environmental Protection Agency hopes you said the first one, which tries to highlight the pocketbook impact better, and adds new details about environmental friendliness. As part of window sticker requirements starting in 2012, the agency is looking to make some changes. The agency is considering swapping the bottom sticker for the top one.
Now consider this sticker, which the EPA is also considering.
The same information that's on the first label is all there, but of course, there's now that giant letter grade that's supposed to sum up fuel and environmental specs for the car in comparison to all other models (cars, trucks, and SUVS) on the market. Reports the NYT:
The highest grade, A+, with fuel economy rated as equivalent to 117 miles per gallon and up, would be for “zero emission” electric cars. Plug-in hybrid electric cars (59 to 116 m.p.g. equivalent) would get an A, and some conventional hybrids, like the Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion, would get an A-. Other hybrids, like the Nissan Altima, Ford Escape and Toyota Camry, would receive a B+.On the positive side, a school-like grading system is one that everyone is intimately familiar with and, therefore, requires no additional explanation (no grade inflation jokes, please). On the negative side, because grades are so closely tied to education, interpreting them with automobiles is more complicated. In school, everyone wants an A. In a showroom, everyone probably doesn't want an A. Fuel consumption and environmental friendliness are only two of a host of dimensions buyers will consider. Maybe fuel efficiency is my top priority. Or maybe my top priority is actually a car with lots of towing power, although I'm happy to get the one that sips the least gas. Since the sticker only comes with a grade, and not pictures (or even names would be ok) of other cars with similar grades, I don't know how heavily to factor it in my decision. Yes, a shopper can go dig up the kinds of details about A+ vs. B+ cars as reported in the New York Times, but the point is if it's not on the sticker, it's likely to be ignored. The EPA hasn't decided which sticker to have automakers adopt. If you have thoughts, you can let the EPA know here. Hat tip: Colin Manuel.
Tags: cars, environment, gas, labels
In 2006, a group of researchers studied senior citizens' decision about Medicare Part D plans. Plenty of seniors got confused and picked suboptimal plans. It sounded like bad news, but there was a potential bright spot: If their doctors helped them out, presumably they'd make better choices.
In a new study (gated here) of medical students and residents at a leading (unnamed) hospital looking at simplified versions of 3, 10 and 20 Medicare Part D plans, the researchers found that more than two-thirds of doctors picked the right one. However, poor choices increased with the number of plans offered. Keep in mind that most states offer more than 50 plans whose descriptions are not nearly as streamlined as the ones in this study. Discouragingly, physician confidence rose as the number of mistakes increased.
But doctors with better numerical skills performed better with their choices. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to use that piece of information when making physician choices today. if you're picking a primary care physician from a health insurance provider's list, you are often told what medical school a doctor attended, but not what that doctor majored in back in college.
Tags: health, prescription drugs
1) The Washington Post asked a series of economists what the appropriate tax rates for the richest Americans should be. Time magazine then asked three leading behavioral economists (Richard Thaler, David Laibson, and Dan Ariely) to read those responses and weigh in.
2) People spend more when it's sunny. Are retailers going to start experimenting with artificial sun lamps? Hat tip: Five Minute Economist.
3) The Department of Health and Human Services releases a computer widget to help you find affordable health insurance.
4) Why is your garage, your pantry, or your office filled with stuff you never use? Overconfidence.
5) When financial executives offer a range for stock market returns with 80 percent confidence, they turn out to be right just one-third of the time.
Tags: health care, overconfidence, stock market, taxes
Alan Schwartz reports on the labeling of waste and recycling bins at a local hospital. One is for "mixed paper"; another is for "Glass - plastic - aluminum. The third, a trash bin, is not labeled "trash" or "waste," however. Rather, it's a nice reminder to make sure you're not throwing out mixed paper, glass, plastic or aluminum.
Addendum: This photo is a nice example of what we'd like to post more of on our Twitter page.
Addendum: This photo is a nice example of what we'd like to post more of on our Twitter page.
In order to increase the rate at which patients renew (and hopefully take) their medicines, CVS experimented with moving the point at which users are asked if they'd like automatic refills when filling out an online order. By moving the question from after the prescription had been filled to before, CVS says sign-up rates doubled. Reports the WSJ:
The test prompt required users to click either yes or no when asked about auto refills, rather than just offering a box to be checked for more information, (says Bari Harlam, senior VP at CVS Caremark). “It’s both things,” she says. “This is very much about using clear, plain language, and also offering it at the right time.”More on the CVS results can be found here.
Tim Harford explains:
The UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has been turning to behavioural economists for advice on such tactics, and has found that there is no pricing scheme more pernicious than “drip pricing”. Under the scheme, customers agree to pay a price only to discover that there is a charge for delivery; another charge for paying by credit card, and another for insurance. Drip pricing taps into the endowment effect, because customers feel that they have already made the decision to purchase; it creates loss aversion because customers commit time and effort to the search before being hit with extra charges; and it is a form of complex pricing which makes it hard to compare offers.Hat tip: Simoleon Sense
Tags: endowment effect, loss aversion, pricing
A fascinating survey of people asked them about the perceived energy savings from a range of environmental behaviors (turning off lights, driving a more fuel efficient car, using energy saving appliances, etc.), and compared their answers to the actual energy savings of those same behaviors. One main takeaway from an online report about the survey is that people don't know much about what saves energy. That's sort of true, but not quite. As the authors of study (ungated here) write:
For a sample of 15 activities, participants underestimated energy use and savings by a factor of 2.8 on average, with small overestimates for low-energy activities and large underestimates for high-energy activities.Why did they make these estimation mistakes? Why did they consistently not know that actions like tuning up a car twice a year produces a much bigger conservation impact than driving 60 mph instead of 70 mph for one hour? One answer is anchoring. The study's survey offered respondents the reference point of an incandescent light bulb, which was described as using 100 units of energy over a one hour period. From there, respondents adjusted upward for other behaviors and appliances, knowing they used more energy, but not knowing how much more. The authors argue that the incandescent bulb is a common reference point for most people today. That sounds fair. The broader lesson is this: If you're like most people you don't know a lot about how much energy various behaviors and appliances use. You do have a reference point, though, probably related to some action or appliance you use commonly and may have read something about. Whatever that action is, it's probably affecting your ideas for reducing your energy usage, albeit not as much as you think.
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