Feb 06, 2009

Using Social Influence to Drive Behavior

by Laura Starita

Since Mayor Bloomberg began talking about how Big (Green) Apple residents consume less than a third as much energy per capita as the average US citizen, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own household’s use of energy. Because I’m the doubting type, and because I don’t have any idea whether my personal use falls above or below the average in New York, for the past year I’ve been engaging in small energy-saving acts to make sure I’m not pulling down the averages: I’ve replaced the incandescent light bulbs in my apartment with fluorescent bulbs, started covering the pots when I boil water, throw open the blinds and turn off the lights during daylight hours. And thanks to my Con Edison bill, I know these acts are working to lower our household energy use.

What I did not know until recently is that my actions have been encouraged by what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of the book Nudge, call “social influence.“ Social scientists, it turns out, have discovered that human beings don’t like standing out from the crowd when it comes to engaging in behavior of which the majority would disapprove. We are a conforming species. We like to keep up with the Joneses; or we like to keep slightly ahead if there is a social benefit to be gained from it. This tendency is strong, and it can be used to people’s advantage—by health organizations, advertisers, even by governments.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is doing just that in an effort to get consumers to use less energy. The New York Times reported this past weekend on an initiative in which a subset of utility customers receive bills with smiley faces if their household energy consumption is less than than that of their neighbors in comparable homes. People can get one, two or three smiley faces (or, at first, a frown if use was above average, but a number of consumers complained, so the utility switched to a positive reinforcement approach only). The customers receiving the modified bills lowered their energy use during the trial period by two percent more than customers who got regular bills—a massive energy savings if those actions can be sustained.

The use of social influence in poverty programs isn’t exactly new—think of the group liability structure within may micro-credit programs—but the Sacramento utility experiment suggests that one does not even need to know who she is being compared with to have her behavior influenced. And it raises the question of where else good information and social influence can help people make better choices.