The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better . or Worse

by Benjamin van Rooij

a nutshell, these were the four messages: (1) energy conservation helps the environment; (2) it benefits society; (3) it saves money; (4) it is common.2 Reread those messages and decide how effective you think each would be. Would appeals to save the environment work? We all like to save money, so what about a message pointing to individual benefits, that reducing energy consumption saves you money? What about a simple statement that reducing energy is common? Shortly after hanging the signs, CialdinI and his team interviewed residents to ask them what they thought about the message they had received. People who had received the fourth message, the one that said energy saving is common, were the least convinced that this would reduce their energy consumption. Most thought it would be entirely ineffective. Cialdini’s research team then measured each household’s energy usage data over the following two weeks and found that ones that had received that fourth message had dramatically reduced energy consumption. Even the most wasteful users reduced energy consumption, and that group of households reduced consumption by an average of 1.22 kilowatt hours