Last week-end my beloved wife and
I went to visit the North of The Netherlands (mainly the city of Groningen). On
the way we encountered at least twice “open bridges” which in simple language
means that the road was closed and traffic was stopped for several minutes
(between 5 and 10) so that one ship could pass from one side of the bridge to
the other. As you may know in The Netherlands there is a lot of water and there
are many bridges and situations of traffic stopping are encountered quite
often.
On the second stop waiting for
the bridge to come back down I’ve noticed a road sign that said in pictures “turn
off your engine while waiting for the bridge”… Suddenly it made a lot of sense
to turn off the engine; after all one will wait for at least 5 minutes and will
go nowhere, so there is no need to keep the engine on and waste fuel. However,
I’ve noticed that sign only after I’ve passed it, namely only after the bridge
was back down and we were on our way and of course after keeping the engine
running for about 5 minutes without moving.
Here’s how decision design can
lead to the desired behavior – turning off the engine while waiting for the
bridge (or in parking areas where people keep the engines running even if they
don’t move).
First, we can agree that turning
the engine off while standing for more than 1 minute makes sense and public
authorities have all the reasons to encourage such a behavior, particularly
that it helps reduce pollution and keep air quality and noise standards.
Second, we can agree that this
type of behavior is not actually the “social norm”.
Third, here’s how this behavior
can be promoted (encouraged):
a. Make
the sign that encourages drivers to turn off their engines BIGGER… People don’t
look around for small sings that tell them what to do. They have in mind their
destination and are annoyed because of the delay. Moreover, usually at opened bridges
long lines of cars are formed and for the drivers in the back it is very hard
to see a small sing.
b. Use
loss aversion to encourage people to turn off the engine by saying that “If you
turn off the engine you will stop losing money”. Telling people how much money they lose is not
a good idea because it depends on the car (a SUV burns more fuel than a small
city car) and because the actual sum of money lost is not that big… the car
probably burns less than 100 ml of fuel in 5 minutes standing which translates
into about 14-18 euro cents.
c. Say
that by a simple gesture (turning the ignition key) one can help protect / save
the environment. In general people want to be environmentally friendly, but
very often they don’t realize that they can “save the planet” just by making a
very simple thing.
This is how with very small costs
and with some intelligent measures air pollution can be decreased…
And as a bonus, in the city of
Groningen I saw a very nice way of reducing annoyance (at least for some) when
people have to wait for the bridge to come back down. In Groningen a pedestrian
bridge has the bottom side painted with some art-like things. This way, the
people that wait on one side of the bridge look at the painting and don’t think
(at least not that much) about the fact that they have to wait several minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment