Green Nudging, Environmental Beliefs and Self-Knowledge. A Contribution to the Psychology of Nudging

The dissertation is intended as a contribution to the psychology of nudging. It investigates both theoretically and empirically the as yet unclear and underexplored conditions under which people’s beliefs can affect, and in turn be affected by, nudge-based policies. As such policies have so far proved extremely promising in the environmental domain, the investigation in question focuses in particular on pro-environmental beliefs and behaviors. The dissertation is premised on the methodological assumption that philosophical and psychological theories and results can often helpfully illuminate each other. Its guiding idea, in particular, is that attempts at developing a mature psychology of nudging can profit immensely from building on social psychology’s long-standing efforts to clarify the many, and often counterintuitive, mutual interactions between the beliefs we hold and the behaviors we engage in. In this regard, two interconnected theses can be regarded as constituting the theoretical backbone of the whole dissertation. The first one holds that, to the extent that our beliefs have been amply shown to influence our behaviors, and can hance be often relied on to explain and predict them, one should expect that people’s beliefs will have a sizeable impact on the nudging process. By parity of reasoning, the second thesis holds that, to the extent that our behaviors have been amply shown to influence our beliefs, and can likewise often be relied on to explain and predict them, it is also reasonable to expect that the nudging process will itself have a sizeable and measurable impact on the formation of people’s beliefs. In line with its general goal, the dissertation consists of two parts – i.e. a theoretical, and an empirical one. Chapters 1 to 3 constitute its theoretical part. They provide a host of conceptual tools, and develop a series of considerations that are then relied on in order to put forward a specific, and empirically testable hypothesis concerning a possible consequence of nudging on the formation of our beliefs. Chapter 4 constitutes the empirical part. It presents and discusses the results of a pilot study designed and performed in order to begin testing the hypothesis in question.