Nudge: Influencing Behavior - Period 2

How can you improve the efficiency of towel and linen reuse programs in hotels? Which incentives help consumers to eat healthier? How can people be motivated to take public transport instead of the car?

These are some of the questions we deal with in the course Nudge: Influencing behaviour. Nudging is the art of subtly influencing people to change behaviour to serve societal and/or commercial goals such as e.g. reducing the number of phone calls to helpdesks, cutting down on energy use, reducing pollution, stimulating healthy behavior, etc.

In this course we build further on the basic principles of consumer choice which you learned in the Judgment and Decision Making course. In the first part, you will be offered tools to implement strategies that will guide consumers toward preferable, sustainable, and healthy choices. You will develop a behaviour change intervention that can benefit society, business, and/or the consumer. In the second part we focus on social influence strategies. You will get insights into the persuasion tactics used by sellers, advertisers, and online service providers, which will make you become better at recognising opportunities for influence and better at employing effective strategies to convince others.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) awards credits based on the ECTS system. Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.