Effects of Digital Nudging in Multi-Stage Decisions - Experimental Evidence on Pro-Environmental Employee Behavior

As corporate emissions contribute substantially to climate change, policymakers are implementing regulations to enforce more sustainable business processes. Consequently, companies are seeking strategies to encourage pro-environmental employee behavior. A promising strategy is digital nudging. However, existing research on digital nudging in a corporate context is scarce and neglects that business processes typically involve multi-stage decisions. Thus, when implementing digital nudging, it is essential to ensure that employees consistently choose sustainable options. With a scenario-based online experiment, we therefore investigate whether digital nudges encourage sustainable choices and if they have spillover effects on subsequent non-nudged decisions. For our experiment, we chose a two-stage decision in terms of booking a business trip. We find that digital nudges encourage pro-environmental employee behavior within every decision stage in which a digital nudge is applied. However, we do not find spillover effects of digital nudges on subsequent non-nudged decision stages.