{"id":1719,"date":"2013-11-18T17:15:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T22:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/elr\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2023-07-25T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T20:00:08","slug":"automatically-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/2013\/11\/18\/automatically-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Automatically Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PLANTS_clover_CA_alecharris\"<\/a>By Caroline Stern — Nov. 18, 2013 at 5:16pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the coming months, the ELR blog will be publishing a series of blog posts that preview articles that will appear in the forthcoming Volume 38.1. This blog is the first in that series.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the forthcoming issue of the Harvard Environmental Law Review<\/i>, Professors Cass Sunstein and Lucia Reisch offer an excellent resource for policymakers seeking ways to encourage consumers to choose green energy instead of environmentally unfriendly (\u201cgray\u201d) energy. \u00a0Their article, \u201cAutomatically Green: Behavioral Economics and Environmental Protection,\u201d provides a \u201cchoice architecture\u201d that analyzes the pros and cons of different possible approaches to encouraging green behavior.\u00a0 At one end of the spectrum is imposing green mandates on consumers (legally banning gray options); at the other end is relying on consumers to make active choices to be green.\u00a0 Between these two extremes is implementing green defaults\u2014such as the automatic double-sided printer setting in offices and schools\u2014which promote green options, but also permit consumers to deviate from them.<\/p>\n

The article discusses in detail the economic and environmental costs and benefits associated with each approach.\u00a0 In order to implement any one of these methods effectively, policymakers must also assess the political and social contexts surrounding their choices.\u00a0 For example, employees would likely be receptive to green defaults in their offices because the impacts are limited to the physical place of work and do not affect their personal finances.\u00a0 By contrast, the general consumer population may be less receptive to green defaults in their homes because such policies can directly affect their privacy and personal expenses.<\/p>\n

The article notes a troubling example of why policymakers may need to be attuned to the politics of the targeted consumer population: at least one study<\/a> has found that certain politically conservative households will actually increase their energy consumption when informed that their consumption levels exceed those of their peers.\u00a0 It is important to note that the policy used in that study was a \u201csocial norms\u201d approach\u2014not green defaults\u2014which seeks to change behavior by informing consumers about the greener habits of their peers.\u00a0 However, it is possible that green defaults could provoke the same resistance if consumers viewed the default as an unwanted interference with their private choices.\u00a0 This disheartening behavioral pattern illustrates that, in at least certain limited circumstances, consumers\u2019 political and social views can foil environmentally friendly policies, despite the benefits of going green.<\/p>\n

In some contexts, it may be difficult to predict the politics or social views of the likely consumer population when implementing a green policy.\u00a0 In order to avoid the risk of backlash, it may be worthwhile to consider, as an alternative, a variation on the green default: \u201cgreen design,\u201d a facially neutral policy that has subtle yet meaningful impacts on consumer behavior.\u00a0 A green design approach has already succeeded in experiments<\/a> promoting healthy eating choices through subtle rearrangements of lunch buffets and supermarkets.<\/p>\n

In the absence of contextual information about political or social attitudes, green design should appeal to policymakers because it may be more neutral in appearance than mandates or ordinary defaults. \u00a0Unlike defaults, which explicitly promote one option over another, green design reinforces the message that the consumer retains full control over his or her choices; its subtlety also means it may be less likely to provoke backlash. \u00a0Green defaults have proven to be an especially effective, low-cost approach, but green design could be a viable option for policymakers seeking alternative ways to facilitate green choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Caroline Stern — Nov. 18, 2013 at 5:16pm Over the coming months, the ELR blog will be publishing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[20,60,67,130,144,236,237,250],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-helr-online","tag-behavioral-economics","tag-consumer-behavior","tag-defaults","tag-green-behavior","tag-helr-vol-38-1","tag-social-attitudes","tag-social-norms","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZkUb-rJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/elr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}