99 Studies on Waste Reduction — Targeting Whom?

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Environmental progress, like the industrial settings that have produced much of our pollution, works best at scale, bringing the largest polluters and waste producers into compliance with societal goals. With that in mind, if you reviewed 99 academic studies on behavioral nudges aiming to achieve waste reduction, what percent do you suppose would be targeted at households or individuals?

20% — the bulk is wisely aimed at corporations and governments.

50%.

80%.

Read on: “This individual focus risks overlooking the structural and systemic changes needed to achieve broader, sustained reductions in waste,” researchers write.

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Until a change in laws in 2019, one lending sector in India legally required borrowers to grant access to their phone data — contacts, call logs and SMS metadata, so that, in the event of nonpayment, the lender could pressure family, friends and even work colleagues to force a payment. The sector?

Pawn shops.

Fintech lenders.

Loan sharks.

Read on: Outlawing this heavy hand encouraged more people to apply for fintech loans, but reduced the approval rate. Citizens were happy about having their privacy protected.

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An illustration denoting the political divide in the U.S. with four hands holding ballots on the left with a blue overlay a ballot box in the middle and four hands holding ballots on the right with a red overlay.

A Pew survey in 2025 found that 62% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats believe their own party is too extreme in its positions, leaving many general election contests a perceived choice between far left and far right. A professor’s theoretical model suggests a solution:

Outlaw gerrymandering.

Curb dark money political spending.

Overhaul the Electoral College.

Attract as few as 1% more voters, who’re centrists, to primaries.

Read on: According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, about 80% of eligible voters don’t bother to vote in primaries. And the 20% who do show up tend to be ideological purists who are hypermotivated to have their views platformed.

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Companies, while achieving reduced greenhouse gas emissions (or not achieving), are adapting operations to hotter temperatures, drought, floods and wildfires. So-called maladaptations can compound global warming, while sustainable adjustments require gauging the impact on a range of constituencies now and into the future. Which of these are maladaptations?

During a drought, tapping into an aquifer in a water-stressed area.

During a hot spell, cranking up use of a/c and refrigeration that runs on power from a coal-fired plant.

When heat sends agricultural yields downward, expand into woodlands home to many animal species.

All of these.

Read on: “Adapting to climate change brings challenges that existing management theory was simply not built to handle.” To help, “management scholarship needs to reach beyond its usual boundaries and draw on fields like ecology, resilience science and environmental justice.”

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Young Hispanic woman is getting vaccinated by a professional medical worker wearing gloves in a doctor's office

The field of nudging, or getting people to voluntarily do what’s good for them with a gentle prod, is moving past one-size-fits-all and examining how a person’s past behavior factors into nudge effectiveness. In a study involving 14,000 patients from two health systems, a simple reminder to get a flu shot was effective with:

People who got one last year.

People who didn’t get one last year.

Read on: Some of us haven’t yet bought into the value of a given behavior. (In academese, such people haven’t yet formed the intention.) Other people are already on board with the value of a given behavior but struggle with follow-through. They don’t need a nudge explaining why a behavior is in their best interest; they need help converting intention into action.