Peer pressure "nudges"

I read yesterday another one of those short pieces explaining how to use social peer pressure (“nudging”?) to increase compliance with some stated goal. In this case, the studies cited were on reducing energy consumption and on reusing hotel towels . Both studies explained that you didn’t need to set specific quotas or make specific rules, but you did need to have specific and public recognition of who was doing what.

1) For energy consumption, the energy company sent notices on a regular basis showing how much homeowners were using in comparison with people in their neighborhood. You got a smiley face notice if you used less than your neighbors and a frown face if you used more. They then offered suggestions of how you could save energy. Usage rates dropped significantly as a result of this simple campaign. As I’ve noted before to the Steve’s, this sounds somewhat like what we did with the Captain Planet initiative and something that we could do with the rest of the campus facilities. We also already do something similar with the ancillary budget process. I’ve suggested to Jerry and Cal that we do something like this with our alumni giving percentages as well.

2) For towel usage, they tested various messages placed in the bathrooms. Simple requests to reuse had limited effect. Providing people with a financial incentive (discount on their bill for reusing) were apparently too minimal to have much of an effect either. What worked was a statement that most people who had stayed in that particular room had reused their towels (the study didn’t comment on whether such a note was actually true when they first placed it in the room, by the way, just that doing so increased towel reusage by 33%). The application here might be for recycling efforts (especially if we develop a more fully developed system), Wellness efforts, and various survey (such as for NSSE or strategic planning).

The key in all of these “peer pressure” efforts appears to be that the information is relevant (people, places, or activities that the target audiences know very well) and potentially public. It’s this last piece that might be trickier in our situation, especially if it includes some type of public “shaming.” But hey, in some cases, that might be what it takes (to get the faculty to fill out a survey, for example).