Public measures aimed at addressing climate change are currently focused on targeting individual behaviour. Certain practices, such as taking public transport and eating seasonal fruits, are encouraged, while others, such as leaving electrical appliances on standby mode or frequently buying new clothing, are discouraged.
This trend is reflected in the increasing popularity of the ‘nudge theory’ over the last decade or so. Popularised by researchers Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their 2008 bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, this approach consists of designing small, non-financial, non-binding and inexpensive incentives for public authorities or private actors to encourage individuals to make the ‘right choices’ for society. Examples of nudges include double-sided printing as a default setting on computers and messages in hotel rooms encouraging guests to reuse their towels.
But this behaviourist approach to public policy on environmental transition is limited in its effect and can produce unintended consequences. Focusing on individual behaviour when it comes to energy transition is a relatively recent trend.
The information campaigns of the 1970s, such as those focused on reducing waste and promoting an ideal indoor temperature of 19 degrees, remained secondary to public policy on energy efficiency, which primarily focused on technology and infrastructure.
A major reversal took place in 2006 when a European directive noted the limits of energy efficiency for meeting consumption reduction targets. A new model began to emerge that emphasised the social aspect of energy transition. According to this model, it is up to individuals to achieve what technology cannot.
But are individuals actually capable of this? Can individual action have the same impact as changing infrastructure, markets, standards and technology? What role should individuals play and what responsibilities should they be given?
The insufficiency of individual incentives
These incentives are based on the idea that individual lives comprise a succession of decisions that must be guided and even optimised. Changing individual decisions, it is believed, can solve the challenges facing society, especially those posed by climate change.
According to this theory, behaviour is self-determined. When an individual makes a decision, to commute to work, to buy something to eat or to take a lift, their choice architecture must be redefined in order to make some choices more desirable than others. Incentives can be practical or playful (rubbish bins in the shape of basketball hoops), focus on visibility (in season fruits at the top of shelves), or encourage imitation (making known neighbours’ energy saving performance).
Though such incentives can have some positive effects, a downstream approach to problem solving is unlikely to be effective in the long run as the lifestyles of individuals are structured by complex mechanisms.
The factors that determine human action are multidimensional. Though conscious decisions play a role, the majority of our actions are routine, highly standardised and more or less dependent on our immediate physical environment.
In other words, small measures can guide individuals to choose the stairs rather than the lift, but their lives rarely take the form of a series of options from which to choose. Daily mobility is largely shaped and constrained by networks and infrastructure, family organisations, spatial planning and employer location.
Decisions regarding food are the product of social trajectories in addition to market infrastructures and family rhythms. The clothing that people wear is largely associated with aspirations for distinction based on social affiliation. Air travel is shaped by the way that companies and economic activities are organised within business travel and the distinction associated with holiday travel.
Freedom of choice is actually diluted in the large collectives that shape our ways of life. How then can we change our behaviour in a sustainable way without addressing the collective root causes?
Nudges: a risky strategy
The individual incentive approach also presents two significant risks that make it all the more problematic. While some measures are primarily aimed at revealing the collective issues to which they relate, others, particularly the gentle and discreet use of nudges, tend to mask them. They are intended to encourage individuals to make decisions beneficial to the common good without them noticing. Thaler and Sunstein describe this as “libertarian paternalism,” which they define as “a relatively moderate, flexible and non-invasive version of paternalism, which does not prohibit anything or restrict anyone’s options.”
Beyond the ethical concerns of targeting people without their knowledge, the main risk is that individuals will ignore the fundamental reasons for their action. This lack of understanding can hinder individual change and democratic debate on possible options.
The other danger consists in placing too much responsibility on individuals as those primarily responsible for the problems that need solving. The Gilet Jaune movement in France revealed deep-seated hostilities to environmental measures because of the massive burden they place on a segment of the population already under financial stress.
In a study conducted by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) in France, participants were asked under which conditions they would accept significant changes to their lifestyles that proved to be necessary. They overwhelming gave the same answer: equity, both between individuals as well as between citizens, businesses and administrations. Measures that exclusively target individuals risk producing significant backlash and limiting the collective ability to deal with these issues.
The main challenge to changing social practices is being able to consider as a whole the individual and the collective, the social and the material.
Action is required on multiple scales: individually, within peer groups (family, friends, colleagues, neighbours), within social groups (social categories, age groups, digital communities, people living in the same territory, etc.) and through changing standards and technical and commercial infrastructure.
Using different levers and maintaining social cohesion
It’s easy to agree that in order to encourage individuals to travel more by bicycle, it is necessary to improve bicycle paths, equipment, road safety and repairs, and enhance the profile of this mode of transportation (health benefits, environmental benefits, a way for children to learn the rules of the road, and so on).
The range of public policy tools does not end with behavioural incentives. In addition to those available for information and communication, there are economic tools (taxes and subsidies), planning tools, infrastructure tools, regulations on the use and production of goods and services, and social standards.
A change in social norms is currently causing people to reconsider the use of air transport in Sweden. By devaluing this form of mobility, associations are successfully changing behaviour. The solution lies in the coherent articulation of the various tools available, which must also be applied to the actors who influence individuals’ room to manoeuvre.
Environmental transition thus requires significant social and political work that takes into account the collective dimension of behaviour and lifestyles.
The Gilet Jaune movement has shown how environmental concerns have suffered under the current economic and social tensions. Against a backdrop of mistrust of institutions and political establishments, in a Europe where the far-right is gorging on feelings of injustice and fear of declining social status, environmental transition cannot be viewed independently of the political environment and social climate in which it takes place.
The keys to environmental transition can be found in social cohesion and a mode of government that is not limited to individual conduct. The depletion of resources means that societies will not escape this transition; it’s up to them to reflect on the democratic and political issues that it entails.
