In today’s episode, we dive into the surprisingly powerful effect of social norms that seem to almost effortlessly shift environmental behavior. Social norms mean“This is what everyone else is doing” or “Here’s an example of what we want you to emulate.”

Our guest today is research psychologist Dr Alessia Dorigoni from the Neuroscience Consumer Lab at the University of Trento in Italy. Alessia is not just a psychologist through, she’s also a fine artist and behavioral economist specializing in nudges.

We explore Alessia’s recent paper titled "Water bottled or tap water? A descriptive-social-norm based intervention to increase a pro-environmental behavior in a restaurant"

The type of norms we’ll be exploring how a written norm, in the form of a poster in a restaurant, that said "2/3 PREFER TAP WATER" effectively encouraged people to order less plastic bottled water.

Alessia and I talk about the theory of nudges, the neuroscience of why norms work, and the surprisingly best formats in which to describe the data to have the most psychological influence.

Alessia's paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494423000191

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How to Save the World is a podcast about the psychology of what gets people to do eco-behaviors and take climate action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to rapidly get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.

Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at ⁠⁠http://katiepatrick.com⁠⁠

Join my Gamify the Planet masterclass training in climate action design for $25/month ⁠⁠http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet⁠⁠

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VAM 103 | Interview with Richard Horvitz, Part 3