Student assistant Lena Hortsch develops nudging concept Choice O-Matic

According to the WHO, around two thirds of all smoked cigarettes end up on the ground. These not only disrupt the aesthetic appearance of the surroundings, but also pose a significant problem for our environment. Despite a large number of public ashtrays, fines for improperly disposed of cigarettes and various awareness campaigns and initiatives, the number of cigarettes on the ground has not yet been sufficiently reduced.

Although most smokers are aware that improperly disposed of cigarettes pose an environmental hazard, convenience often wins out. Consequently, there is no need for more ashtrays; instead, incentives must be created to use them.

The inspiration for the Choice O-Matic is the idea, originally from Great Britain, of influencing the disposal behavior of smokers through humorous either-or questions and corresponding voting options. In doing so, the concept makes use of the behavioral economics approach of nudging. Nudging aims at guiding people to a (for them) better decision without forbidding them anything or using economic incentives. The Choice O-Matic optimizes this concept by converting existing ashtrays to save resources. The goal, then, is to design a customized Choice O-Matic for each location in and around Kassel, which will be adapted to meet the exact requirements of each location.

The Choice O-Matic already won first place in an internal association project funding competition in 2021 and was exhibited at the TEDx conference in Kassel that same year. The project is supported by Infinity Deutschland e.V., a student initiative whose mission is to solve global problems regionally.

Student Lena Hortsch, who developed Choice O-Matic, holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Kassel. She has been working as a student assistant at ITeG since 2019, where she learned about nudging. She was able to work on the Nudger project from the beginning, which deals with privacy nudges in the digital work context.

At the beginning of 2021, she started to work on her own nudging concept - the Choice O-Matic - as part of her voluntary work at Infinity Kassel e.V.. In the same year, she won first place in a project funding competition and was thus able to continue researching the idea. In the fall of 2021, the first prototype of the Choice O-Matic was exhibited at the TEDx conference in Kassel. Currently, Ms. Hortsch is studying sustainable management in her master's degree in Kassel and is working on optimizing the prototype. In her master's thesis, she wants to write about nudging for more environmentally friendly behavior and test the Choice O-Matic in her own field experiment.