Heuristics & Biases Related to Sustainability

While innovation is important, it isn’t enough on its own. The hidden driver behind every sustainability effort is human thinking, and that is where the real challenges lie.

Our brain relies on heuristics, which are fast, automatic mental shortcuts to help us make the quickest decisions.

But these shortcuts come with biases, and we’re going to share a few with you here:

• Temporal discounting: Our tendency to value immediate rewards more than future outcomes, one of the psychological roots of climate apathy. If the effects of environmental damage seem distant or abstract, we naturally deprioritise them.¹

• Moral licensing is a psychological effect where performing one small action, like recycling a bottle, makes us feel like we’ve “done our part,” which reduces the possibility of making further sustainable choices. Rather than encouraging us to make consistent, sustainable choices, the initial good deed gives us a mental permission to make less sustainable choices later.²

• Decision fatigue refers to mental exhaustion after making a number of decisions throughout the day, which consumes mental energy. As our mental energy decreases, we tend to default to the easiest choices, which are often less sustainable. For example, after a long day, one might tend to use single-use plastic items or fast fashion purchases simply because they require less mental effort than more sustainable alternative choices.³

This isn’t about lack of intelligence or motivation, it’s more about how our brains work and the psychology behind it. Which is why simply telling people to “do better” is not enough. We need to redesign the environments in which decisions are made.

The Micro-Moments Where Change Really Happens

Many sustainability efforts tend to focus on large-scale shifts, which require long timelines and broader approvals and coordination. There are important shifts, but equally powerful changes happen in everyday choices made by individuals.

Their micro-changes include choosing a plant-based meal, repairing instead of replacing, and sharing instead of owning. These changes are shaped less by rational calculations and more by habits, defaults, and social cues.

At Colectivo, we focus on these small yet powerful moments of choice. By focusing on behavioural insights, we turn good intentions into lasting action.

Mental Design: A Mindset Shift for a Greener Future

Think of your behaviour change like urban planning, if there are no signs, uphill roads everywhere and only one bridge, most people won’t get where they need to go.

That’s how sustainability initiatives that fail to take the human into account can sometimes feel: confusing, daunting, effortful and inaccessible.

The solution? Design systems that make the sustainable choice the easy choice. Colectivo specialises in shaping physical, digital, and social environments where sustainable behaviours become a default. It’s not about convincing people to care, it's about building systems where caring is a second nature.

By working with human psychology, we unlock the full potential of sustainable strategies. Biases and heuristics are not flaws, in fact they are tools, once understood can be thoughtfully used.

Let’s Rethink Sustainability, Together

The future of sustainability will not be shaped just by technology or policy change, it will be shaped by the psychology of everyday choices.

Let’s redesign how people really think and build a future where better decisions happen by design and not by effort.

Contact Colectivo to learn how we can help you embed sustainable thinking into every moment that matters.

hello@colectivo.ie

Colectivo | Collective Impact

Footnotes

¹ Ruggeri et al. (2022). The globalizability of temporal discounting. Published in Nature Human Behaviour. Read here

² Merritt, Effron & Monin (2010). Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad. Published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Read here

³ Bhat (2024). Sustainable overcoming decision fatigue: Simplifying choices for better outcomes. Published in Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences. Read here