Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits

TLDR

Interventions to change everyday behaviors often target beliefs and intentions, yet they are unlikely to alter habits that have become automatic. The authors propose two potential habit change interventions. Successful habit change interventions disrupt environmental cues that automatically trigger habits, with downstream‑plus interventions acting at vulnerable points during natural environmental changes and upstream interventions pre‑emptively altering cues to establish new habits, and policy interventions can also promote new habit formation.

Abstract

Interventions to change everyday behaviors often attempt to change people's beliefs and intentions. As the authors explain, these interventions are unlikely to be an effective means to change behaviors that people have repeated into habits. Successful habit change interventions involve disrupting the environmental factors that automatically cue habit performance. The authors propose two potential habit change interventions. “Downstream-plus” interventions provide informational input at points when habits are vulnerable to change, such as when people are undergoing naturally occurring changes in performance environments for many everyday actions (e.g., moving households, changing jobs). “Upstream” interventions occur before habit performance and disrupt old environmental cues and establish new ones. Policy interventions can be oriented not only to the change of established habits but also to the acquisition and maintenance of new behaviors through the formation of new habits.