Duplex by default (and a counterintuitive coda)
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MEASURING THE BENEFITS OF CHANGING DEFAULT PRINTER SETTINGS
Here’s a no-brainer application of benevolent defaults that has a provable, lasting change in paper consumption.
TITLE
Can Indifference Make the World Greener?
AUTHORS
Johan Egebark (Stockholm University) & Mathias Ekström (Norwegian School of Economics)
ABSTRACT
We test whether people’s tendency to stick with the default option can help save resources. In a natural field experiment we switch printers’ default settings, from simplex to duplex printing, at a large Swedish university. The results confirm that roughly one third of all printing is determined by the default alternative, and hence daily paper consumption drops by 15 percent due to the change. The effect is immediate, lasts throughout the experimental period, and remains intact after six months. We also investigate how the more conventional method of encouraging people to save resources performs, and find it has no impact. Recent theoretical and empirical contributions indicate that the default effect works through recommendation, depends positively on the number of alternatives in the choice set, and is reinforced for difficult decisions. We demonstrate that the default option matter in a simple, non-dynamic, decision task with only two alternatives, and where people have been explicitly informed about the recommended course of action.
COUNTERINTUITIVE CORNER
You would think turning off cover sheets on shared printers would reduce paper consumption. I mean, why waste a page every time you print? Well, Microsoft did an internal experiment. It turns out printing cover sheets actually reduced paper consumption. Boom. That’s why you’ve got to test your intuitions.
