Shifting consumer behavior to address climate change

Abstract

We review recent articles on how to change consumer behavior in ways that improve climate impacts, with a special focus on those articles using experimental interventions and measuring actual behaviors. We organize the findings using the SHIFT framework to categorize behavior change strategies based on five psychological factors: Social influence (e.g. communicating that others are changing to plant-based diets doubled meatless lunch orders), Habit (e.g. consumer collaboration to establish new, value-based practices helped to reduce food waste), Individual self (e.g. when women made up half of the group, 51% more trees were conserved), Feelings and cognition (e.g. anticipated guilt reduced choice of unethical attributes in made-to-order products), and Tangibility (e.g. concrete representations of the future of recycled products improved recycling behavior).

Keywords: Behavior change; Climate change; Consumer behavior; Feelings; Habit; Individual self; Social influence; Sustainability; Tangibility.