INSPIRE - Intentional defaults for more sustainable infrastructure: Studying interventions to alleviate biases in upstream, multi-stakeholder decisions

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1531041 (Klotz). This INSPIRE project is jointly funded by the Environmental Sustainability program in the CBET Division in the ENG Directorate, the Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences program in the SES Division of the SBE Directorate, and the Office of Integrative Activities. The project will extend - to upstream, multi-stakeholder decision making for sustainability - the study of interventions designed to alleviate decision biases such as framing effects and social norms. This topic will be studied in the context of defaults, or starting points, in development decisions for physical infrastructure, which has long term impacts on various sustainability concerns. Such decisions in infrastructure, as in other domains, are guided by decision aids including rating systems that do not take full advantage of advances in behavioral sciences, in part because this is an area where interdisciplinary exchange of methods, problems, and solutions has been rare. Through a collaboration that was established by the NSF RCN SUSSTAIN, this project will examine whether and how default options presented to infrastructure designers can help them overcome barriers to the selection of more sustainable options. Intentionally designed defaults will be studied in Envision, a leading rating system for sustainable infrastructure. The research plan follows an iterative process that begins with experimental work to test a series of default interventions, with students and professionals, using replicas of actual infrastructure development decisions. Experiments will test the extent to which behavioral science theories translate to upstream, multi-stakeholder decisions, in particular whether choice defaults influence such decisions, and through which of three channels: the cognitive energy required to make a decision; perceptions that the default is the recommended or social norm option; and by framing the outcome as a loss or gain. Experiments will also explore whether disclosing interventions diminishes their effect. Semi-structured interviews with decision makers will complement the experiments to explore the relative influence of the choice defaults compared to technical and economic considerations and compared to stakeholders' differing goals, importance weightings, and tradeoff values. This project is set up to yield educational case studies to infuse research insights into engineering and behavioral science curricula.