Nudging Experiment:How to avoid using lights during the day？
Will you turn on the lights in a room with plenty of light during the day? I know this sounds strange, but my roommate always turn on the lights in bathroom and kitchen in the day. Perhaps because the light in romms is not much different, he often forgets to turn off the lights. So I decided to indirectly influence his potential behavior through the nudge experiment, so as to avoid this unnecessary waste of resources.
I suspect that the reason for his behavior of turning on the light easily is that his own room is relatively dim, and he needs lighting every time he enters his room, so he has a subconscious behavior habit of turning on the light when he enters the door. I plan to use two methods to help him reduce the frequency of this situation.
Period 1
First of all, I noticed that there are many debris and stuffs hanging behind the toilet door. When entering the door, it obstructs a certain amount of light, resulting in a subjective feeling of insufficient light. After I placed these stuff in other places, the light seen through the door would become sufficient, so that people would not think of turning on the light.
Period 2
Afterwards, during the day I closed the curtains and the partitions were pulled up to allow more light to enter the bathroom, making people feel that the room is well-lit and there is no need to turn on the lights.
Before the experiment, my roommate almost forgot to turn off the light 1-2 times a day. After I tried to make the room full of light, it might give him more sense of security, so this situation didn’t happen in the daytime in the last two days. Actually, I think that nudging is a more effective and smarter method than helping people eliminate or get rid of bad behavior habits. If some external factors can be used to guide his or her behavior to change, it is indeed a better solution to solve problems.
Qiushun Yao