Investigating Acceptance Among the Swedish Population Towards Energy-Saving Behavioral Interventions

Abstract: Legislation, economic incentives and informational campaigns are traditional tools of government used to exert its influence on citizens. More recently, other behavioral interventions called nudges and boosts have also come into usage to influence behavior. Nudges exploit faults in human decision making, pushing the individual in a direction of a specific choice, hence the name nudge. Boosts instead try to foster existing competences in the individual, effectivizing decision making while still preserving the individual’s own agency. Both nudges and boosts have proved to be cost-effective ways of influencing behavior, making them attractive alternatives to traditional behavioral interventions. An a priori way to investigate the effectiveness of behavioral interventions without their implementation is by measuring their acceptance. This thesis investigates the acceptance for nudges and boosts compared to traditional behavioral interventions when used in the domain of energy saving practices. The results show that acceptance differs greatly depending on which behavioral intervention is used, which energy saving domain the behavioral intervention is applied to, and to an extent the demographic characteristics of the individuals exposed to the behavioral intervention.