Climate nudges : psychological tools to fix a warming planet

Abstract

What if, during your next luxuriously long shower, a small device on the showerhead catches your eye? It counts gallons like a stopwatch. As the numbers grow, a cartoon polar bear despairingly watches the iceberg beneath him slowly melt. Small psychological nudges like this have profoundly shaped people's choices in countless fields, from medicine to economics to policy. But can these tiny nudges help us take on the largest problems? Before the Goliath climate change, here stand the pioneers in psychology, economics and energy management, with a behavioral slingshot in hand.