Liverpool or Manchester United? On an ashtray hung on the exterior facade of an Irish bar in Val-Thorens, Savoie, the question is written in capital letters. To vote for your favorite team, you have to throw your cigarette butt in the receptacle assigned to it. The method is playful: customers have the impression of participating in a game, and without even realizing it, they avoid throwing their cigarette butts on the ground. The strategy has had some success: unlike the other bars in the city, here, since the installation of this probing ashtray, there are few cigarette butts on the ground. But this little game is not really one. It’s a ” nudge “Where “nudge” in English, a tool from behavioral economics, a scientific discipline born from the encounter between psychology and economics.
This method of “gentle handling” was popularized in 2008, when the book was published Nudge, written by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein [Nudge. La méthode douce pour inspirer la bonne décision, Vuibert, 2010]. Winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, the economist and the lawyer have theorized this strategy to discreetly encourage individuals to improve their behavior. “If you want people to do something, make it easy for them”, explains Richard Thaler in his book. The formula appeals: the “nudge” arouses the curiosity of researchers around the world. Marie-Eve Laporte, lecturer at the University Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne, knows the springs well.
“Overcome cognitive biases”
White lines drawn on the ground to maintain a physical distance from others or giant stickers encouraging you to take the stairs rather than the escalator in the metro… “Nudges are everywhere, and increasingly linked to the environment”, advances the researcher in management sciences. “The principle is to overcome the cognitive biases that we encounter and to help people make choices that are most useful for them and for society”she says.
Those “cognitive biases” affect our ability to make decisions. In particular, they slow down the modification of individual behavior in favor of environmental protection. Attraction for conformity, effect of immediacy – we generally favor decisions that provide immediate rather than deferred benefits –, or even fear of change… These blockages prevent, for example, drastically reducing the consumption of red meat or giving up the car. to use public transport.
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