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Recent publications – The potential of digital nudging to bridge the gap between environmental attitude and behavior in the usage of smart home applications

 |  Forschung - Research

The attitude-behaviour gap depicts the disparity between individuals’ attitudes and behaviour regarding a problem. For instance, this phenomenon is prominent regarding energy consumption, where people often express concerns about sustainability but struggle to turn those into tangible actions. But narrowing this gap and reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions requires behavioural interventions since technological advances alone are insufficient. Here, nudging signifies a promising intervention that uses insights from behavioural economics to motivate individuals towards more sustainable energy practices and overcome the attitudes-behaviour gap. In this study, Professor Mirbabaie and his colleagues investigated how modifying digital choice architectures with nudges can influence consumer energy conservation behaviour in smart home applications (SHAs) by testing the effectiveness of three digital nudges (self-commitment, reminder, and social norm nudge) in an online experiment (n = 391). Although the results indicated no effect on bridging the attitude-behaviour gap, this paper found the potential to promote energy conservation through nudging and, therefore, it substantially contributes to persuasive and information systems-enabled sustainability for a better world.

Stieglitz, S., Mirbabaie, M., Deubel, A., Braun, L.-M. & Kissmer, T. (2023). The potential of digital nudging to bridge the gap between environmental attitude and behavior in the usage of smart home applications. International Journal of Information Management (72).