Browsing by Subject "online environment"

Tools to change current consumption patterns are needed. Nudging has shown promise in relation to increasing pro-environmental behaviour and it has been studied a lot especially in physical environments. As more and more of overall consumption is shifting to online environments, it is important to understand whether digital nudging has potential when it comes to more sustainable purchase decisions. This thesis provides a systematic literature review of the existing body of experimental research studying digital nudging as a mean to increase more environmentally sustainable consumption. Based on an analysis of 13 included studies, the outcomes of using digital nudging show inconsistencies both between as well as within studies. Therefore, the results give little support for using digital nudging as a primary tool when it comes to behavioural change. While different forms of information provision and social norms are the most commonly tested digital nudging techniques, no specific technique can be seen to work better than others. Positive outcomes can be reached through multiple techniques as long as the techniques are well designed and implemented and carefully targeted. However, unlike previous research, this literature review gives no support to the use of defaults in the context of sustainable consumption as it might even result to negative outcomes. The results of this thesis show that the experimental research combining digital nudging and sustainable consumption is still very limited both in its quantity as well as quality. Future research should aim to capture consumption behaviour in real online stores, broaden the consumption context to ones without well established routines and utilize the potential of digital nudging more fully.