Data donations and digital nudges for sustainable behavior change

The DataDonations4SustainableChange project investigates strategies to promote individual data donations for the benefit of research and society. We further aim to employ these data for sustainable behavior change, in the health or environmental domain in particular. To that end, we’re exploring the role of digital nudges throughout the entire data donation process – from mobilization to motivation and value creation.

Challenge

In recent years, the rights of citizens to access their data have been strengthened considerably, making data donations possible from the general public, at scale. The spread of digital technologies into various domains of people’s life is creating a plethora of promising application contexts for data donation for research and society, particularly in the context of complex challenges in the areas of health and the environment.

Despite these efforts, there are significant challenges that come with establishing data donation as a common and effective form of active citizen participation. The research project investigates what role digital nudges can play to address these challenges.

Approach

Digitalization offers new opportunities for designing personalized and dynamic nudges. The DataDonations4SustainableChange project analyzes these opportunities from the perspectives of communication science, information systems and behavioral economics – made possible by the cooperation of the University of Regensburg, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich and FAU.

The team at FAU focuses on creating value from the donated data in order to address societal challenges like climate change, resource scarcity, or the early detection of diseases.

Our current research centers on loyalty card data from everyday food shopping. By analyzing donated loyalty card data, we aim to understand how people perceive their own shopping behavior and determine which digital nudges can lead to long-term, healthy, and sustainable food shopping habits.

Funding

DataDonations4SustainableChange is financed by the Bavarian Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt).

Team

Leonie Manzke, Verena Tiefenbeck; project partners: Philipp Hartl, Daniel Schnurr (University of Regensburg), Elisabeth Schmidbauer, Jörg Haßler (Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich)

If you are a student who is interested in writing your thesis involving the research focus of this project, please check this page for open topics, or reach out to Leonie Manzke.