Social Influence

Exploiting network effects and psychology to encourage positive and sustainable behavior.

There are plenty of things we should be doing in our everyday lives for environmental sustainability. Carpooling or taking transit. Switching to efficient light bulbs. Buying locally-grown produce. Choosing responsibly manufactured products.

There might also be things we don't know we should be doing.

While each of these behaviors might be small for an individual to do them, in aggregate they make a huge difference. 

Possible ideas

• One idea I’ve been kicking around is to create some sort of dynamic carpooling network that affords people who don’t necessarily have fixed hours some flexibility. My theory is that sticking to a rigid daily schedule for transit or carpooling may not be possible for some people, and so I wonder if there’s some middle ground solution that might still reduce the number of car trips people take.

Related email discussions:

• David Weightman suggested looking at large-scale "big picture" sustainability issues.

Related researchers:

• BJ Fogg, Stanford Captology Lab. One of the first to study how computers and technology can be used to influence people.

Interested people:

• Mike Brzozowski, HP Labs
• Karen Theisen, Vinq, San Jose, CA ( love the dynamic carpooling network idea!)