Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, 9000, Ghent, Belgium.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 2;12(1):9201. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-12964-1.
Effective behavioral interventions are essential to address urgent societal challenges. Over the past decade, nudging interventions (i.e., arranging the environment to promote adaptive behavioral choices) have surged in popularity. Importantly, effective application of the nudging approach requires clear guiding principles with a firm basis in behavioral science. We present a framework for nudging interventions that builds on evidence about the goal-directed inferential processes underlying behavior (i.e., processes that involve context-dependent inferences about goals and the actions available to achieve these goals). We used this framework to develop nudging interventions that target context-relevant cognitive inferences. We examined the effectiveness of these inference nudging interventions for promoting two important types of societal behavior: pro-environmental actions and adherence to COVID-19 guidelines. As predicted, two online studies revealed that inference nudging interventions successfully increased energy conservation (Study 1) as well as social distancing during the COVID-19 crisis (Study 2). A field experiment found that inference nudging interventions increased hand disinfection in a real-life store during the COVID-19 crisis (Study 3). Our findings highlight the importance of applying state-of-the-art insights about the (inferential) determinants of behavior in behavior change interventions.
有效的行为干预对于应对紧迫的社会挑战至关重要。在过去的十年中，推动干预（即，安排环境以促进适应性行为选择）的受欢迎程度激增。重要的是，推动方法的有效应用需要明确的指导原则，并在行为科学中具有坚实的基础。我们提出了一个推动干预的框架，该框架基于关于行为的目标导向推理过程的证据（即，涉及关于目标和实现这些目标的可用行动的上下文相关推理的过程）。我们使用此框架来开发针对相关认知推理的推动干预。我们研究了这些推理推动干预措施对于促进两种重要的社会行为的有效性：有利于环境的行动和遵守 COVID-19 准则。正如预测的那样，两项在线研究表明，推理推动干预措施成功地增加了节能（研究 1）以及在 COVID-19 危机期间的社交距离（研究 2）。一项现场实验发现，推理推动干预措施在 COVID-19 危机期间增加了现实生活中商店的手部消毒（研究 3）。我们的研究结果强调了在行为改变干预措施中应用有关行为（推理）决定因素的最新见解的重要性。
