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Sustainable transport: take advantage of the sun to encourage it
Gilles Grolleau
Professor of Economics, Director of Research, ESSCA
To encourage people to make more sustainable transport choices, you might as well approach them on a sunny day!
Initiatives aimed at encouraging individuals to prefer more sustainable modes of transport (e.g., walking, cycling, using public transport rather than car, etc.) should be encouraged.
They use a variety of levers of influence, such as monetary incentives, persuasion or appeals to conform to a social norm that favors the objective pursued. These initiatives come from a variety of players (e.g., public authorities, environmental associations, producers of alternative transport solutions), with one thing in common: the promotion of more sustainable mobility.
The attitudes and behaviors of individuals in relation to the choice of a mode of transport have generally been analyzed through the prism of the rational individual(homo economicus), capable of taking into account all the costs and benefits (economic, but also on other dimensions such as practicality or effects on perceived status) of all the alternatives and selecting the one delivering the highest net benefit. Nevertheless, this model of behavior is increasingly being challenged, not least because of its incomplete nature. Indeed, while it has led to some remarkable advances, it has also failed to take into account cognitive and behavioral biases, making it possible to explain and predict behavior that seems a priori irrational.
In addition to the purely rational approach, a more behavioral approach has developed, based onhomo heuristicus, which recognizes the existence of these biases and their consequences, which can lead to decisions that are sometimes surprising, but predictable.
One of these biases, projection bias, describes the tendency to let our current preferences influence beyond what is reasonable our decisions that nevertheless relate to elements of the future, knowing that this future is sometimes completely disconnected or independent from the present situation. For example, individuals would be more interested and more likely to invest in solar panels if approached on a sunny day than on a rainy one.
In reality, whatever the weather at the time when individuals are approached, what should a priori count is sunshine throughout the year, which plays a decisive role in determining the profitability of such an investment. This bias describes the tendency of individuals to expect their future preferences to be similar to their current ones.
In an experimental study carried out in Montpellier in 2019 on 218 individuals, Sophie Clot, Gilles Grolleau and Lisette Ibanez wanted to check whether individuals developed more favorable beliefs about the ecological potential of certain alternative modes of transport (e.g., walking, cycling, public transport) and whether they were more likely to express higher intentions to adopt these modes of transport if they were approached on a good weather day as opposed to a bad weather day. Individuals were asked identical questions in all respects, except that one half of the sample was approached during good weather and the other half during bad weather. The aforementioned researchers found that approaching individuals on a fine-weather day had a positive impact (i) on their beliefs that alternative modes of transport contribute to environmental protection, and (ii) on their intention to adopt these modes of transport.
These results show that a priori irrelevant variables such as the weather can affect people's attitudes and behavioral intentions. They also suggest the use of temporal "windows of opportunity" to encourage individuals to opt for alternative modes of transport, and the use of nudges based on congruence between weather and desired changes. They also suggest great caution in relation to ill-intentioned initiatives that might seek to exploit the projection bias unduly for undesirable ends.
Pour aller plus loin : Clot, S., Grolleau, G., & Ibanez, L. (2022). Projection bias in environmental beliefs and behavioural intentions : an application to solar panels and eco-friendly transport. Energy Policy, 160, 112645. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112645
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