Mitigating Climate Change via the Demand Side and Behavioral Insights: Policy Recommendation and Current Challenges

Applying behavioral insights for climate-change mitigation has both potential and pitfalls. Drawing upon IPCC insights on the potential of demand-side mitigation of various sectors, actors, and regions, three arguments address the role of the behavioral sciences. First, behavioral insights have heterogeneous effects, rendering the question of their average contribution meaningless. Second, many effects from behavioral science are found outside of the academic literature, so these relevant indicators of effectiveness do not inform the debate. Third, mitigation impact depends on scaling, which provides unique challenges for behavioral science because the research and application settings are often markedly different. Due to these challenges, policymakers should proceed with caution and apply behavioral insights with a careful case-by-case analysis.