Addressing the value-action gap through nudging

So sometimes people may want to act green, but they don't act accordingly... This is called the value-action gap. The value-action gap shows the failure of the ABC model; the model doesn't include the structural and institutional systems that prevent individuals to act green, such as:

1. Individuality: other attitudes may out-weigh environmental concerns (e.g. lack of interest for the environment).
2. Responsibility: people may feel it's not their job, believing individual action is pointless.
3. Practicality: certain impediments prevent action, including lack of time, lack of money, lack of physical storage (e.g. for recycling/composting), lack of information/encouragement, and physically inability to carry out activities. 

Therefore, policy that attempts to promote individual green behaviour through education is arguably worthless. Instead, there are now calls to dismiss personal values as targets of change and instead focus on altering cultural dynamics that influence behaviour i.e. steer cultural change so individuals indirectly engage in green behaviour.

This can be called nudging: building a better choice architecture that promotes simpler actions that encourages green behaviour, which become default. Individuals engage in green behaviour sub-consciously. Super clever in my opinion! Examples of such nudging can be soft, such as reducing food packaging size to decrease food waste (Figure 1), to something more hard, such as energy providers setting renewable energy as the default energy choice.

Figure 1: The different ways food packaging can result in less food waste 

Nudging has the ability to generate that cumulative action from individuals who may not traditionally engage in green behaviour; it fundamentally alters norms, producing easier way to be greener. However, for nudging to work, it has to be implemented by a higher power i.e. it must be initiated at the government or business level. So who nudges them to nudge? If nudging isn't being implemented and the average non-environmentalist isn't engaging in green behaviour, is there any hope for environmentalism at the individual level?? Shall we indeed leave climate change mitigation to other actors (i.e. not the individual)? I plan to delve deeper into these questions soon!