The idea behind so-called nudges is to encourage certain behaviour by playing on the choices people face day-to-day. Photo: AFP
With the help of an American research institute, a Chinese home meal delivery company conducted an experiment to no longer provide customers with disposable cutlery in exchange for a reward.
This method, aimed at reducing single-use plastic waste, proved successful, as it reportedly increased the share of orders without cutlery by 648%.
The idea behind so-called nudges is to encourage certain behaviour by playing on the choices people face day-to-day. This might involve rewarding consumers, citizens or brand customers for their "good behaviour."
Conceived by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (an economist and a philosopher respectively) in the United States in the early 2000s, the idea is to convey the nudge though a playful, positive and motivating message.
One of the most frequently cited examples is that of fake flies being added to urinals at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport. The aim was to encourage men to aim more accurately by giving them something to focus on, in order to keep splash and spillage to a minimum. The initiative worked, reducing spillage by 80% and saving an estimated 8% in cleaning costs!
Such is the success of this concept that many countries have adapted it to the ecological context, with so-called green nudges. Examples include garbage cans featuring fun messages, eco-responsible messaging on restaurant menus and environmental scores.
While they can help us become more eco-friendly, nudges are nevertheless accused of distracting us from "real actions" in favour of small gestures. But in China, one company seems to have risen to the challenge with impressive results, with researchers from the Chinese branch of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC-China) assessing the effectiveness of its action.
A few years ago, Ele.me, one of China's largest food delivery companies, acquired by the famous e-commerce platform Alibaba, joined forces with EPIC-China to launch an experiment based on the concept of green nudges. The idea was to offer customers the option of not asking for wooden chopsticks and/or disposable plastic cutlery.
In exchange, consumers who chose to forego this service could see a tree planted in their name in a desert area of China, thanks to green points accumulated with each order placed on the site.
The experiment was carried out over two years (2019-2020) in 10 major Chinese cities. Only three of them (Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin) implemented the green nudge system, while the others served as control cities. Among these cities, the researchers then randomly sampled around 200,000 of the platform's active users.
According to the study findings, the technique seems to bear fruit, as it is reported to have increased the share of orders without cutlery by 648%. Not an insignificant achievement considering that Ele.me had more than 753 million users in 2022. "If green nudges were applied to all of China, more than 21.75 billion sets of single-use cutlery could be saved annually, equivalent to preventing the generation of 3.26 million metric tonnes of plastic waste and saving 5.44 million trees (from wooden chopsticks)," the study estimates.
"Our findings show that simple nudges can make a big difference in changing consumers’ behaviours and could become a tool for policymakers as they confront the immense challenge of plastic waste," said EPIC-China’s research director and study co-author, Guojun He, quoted in a news release.
"Other food delivery platforms, such as UberEats and DoorDash, could try similar nudges to reduce cutlery consumption and plastic waste globally." – AFP Relaxnews
