Can I get more Angelenos on public transit — by checking into Foursquare?
That’s the question I had after reading Wall Street Journal’s article from earlier this week: “The Secret to Turning Consumers Green.” My quibbles about calling all people consumers aside (The article talks about people adopting greener habits — i.e. opting to reuse towels. Are towel reusers really best described as consumers?), I found the piece quite absorbing. The gist: People are really enticed to behave in eco-friendly ways when they believe those ways to be the social norm — and are made to feel guilty for not conforming to them.
Now, there are a lot of problems with that hypothesis. For one, I’m not entirely convinced that green guilt affects people’s behavior as much as the other green — money. The article begins by opining that 5-cent bag tax in Washington D.C. reduced bag use less because of the cost and more because of social pressures — an assertion that isn’t really proven in the article. Certainly, what I saw when I was in D.C. was people considering plastic bags then opting against them due to the nickel fee.
Second — and perhaps this is because I now live in gay-friendly West Hollywood, combined with the fact that I read too much Foucault in grad school — I have general qualms about people feeling guilty just for not conforming to social norms.
On the other hand, I do agree that many of our polluting behaviors — whether it’s the air pollution while circling around the block for 15 minutes looking for free parking or leaving the heater on at home while sitting in an over air-conditioned office — have been made so commonplace and “normal” that most people don’t even notice them. Maybe if these behaviors became a little more denormalized, we could all breathe easier — and pay less on our gas bills too –
Which brings me to Foursqure (If you don’t know what Foursquare is, it’s like Facebook Places with a game aspect. If you don’t know what Facebook is, I can’t help you). Whenever I get on a bus, I try to check into Foursquare. I say try, because most bus lines span a long swath of the city, making location-specific check-ins difficult.
My reason for checking in so far wasn’t really motivated by green concerns, but now I’m wondering — Perhaps if more of us checked into our favorite bus and subway lines, more people would start to see public transit as the norm and start getting on board themselves?
I hereby request Metro and Big Blue Bus badges for Foursquare! Some sort of bonus for bus and rail line mayors would be nice too –
I know what you’re going to ask: What if I want to encourage bicycling? Well — I suppose you could add your bike as a Foursquare location! Has anyone got a bike on Foursquare?
Photo of Sirinya Tritipeskul, Be a Green Commuter blogger, from UCLA Transportation. Yes, Sirinya’s on Foursquare — She’s the current mayor of UCLA BruinBus – Medical.
Social pressure to go green is actually very effective from some recent studying I’ve read. An energy company experimented with telling focus groups of energy users the environmental benefits of reducing energy use, how much money it would save them, and finally indicators of how much their neighbors were doing.
What they found was competing with neighbors to reduce energy had the biggest effect on energy use and behavior, much more so than being told it would save money. They also found if people knew too many specifics about their neighbors use, some people who were doing good would get lazy about it if they were much better than peers and actually become worse. So rather then numbers they found a happy face system worked better, so if you were below average in energy conservation compared to others in same neighborhood, you got a sad face, and if you were above average you got a happy face. The competitive drive would work toward greater efficiency. The margins were not huge, but it also doesn’t cost the energy company anything to do this and produces measurable results.
Comment by Gary Kavanagh — October 21, 2010 @ 10:45 am
Speaking of which, I just got booted as the mayor of the UCLA BruinBus Medical Stop TODAY.
Comment by Sirinya — October 21, 2010 @ 1:19 pm
I don’t know anything about FourSquare, so maybe this isn’t helpful for that app but could apply to others: perhaps the check-ins can help boost ridership by showing how to get to various places on bus or train or bicycle. For example, a check-in saying “I’m taking the 123 bus from West Hollywood to LACMA.” Or, “Enjoying a bike ride down the Westside Trail going from X to Y.”
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Comment by Marc — October 21, 2010 @ 5:20 pm