Behavioral Design strategies with the potential to prevent rebound effects: insights from a Systematic Literature Review

Rebound effects (RE), defined as negative consequences of interventions arising from induced changes in system behavior, are increasingly acknowledged to undermine the potential benefits of sustainability interventions.

Nevertheless, knowledge regarding specific design strategies capable of preventing RE by design is scarce.

This research presents a Systematic Literature Review aimed explicitly at uncovering and synthesizing behavioral design strategies with the demonstrated or theoretical potential to prevent rebound effects. Here, "behavioral design strategies" refer to guidelines to enable or incentivize people towards desirable behaviors, choices and actions.

The identified strategies were classified based on three main criteria:
• Design levels, including products, product-service systems, and/or sociotechnical systems;
• Leverage points: ranging from shallow interventions (e.g., information provision) to deep structural shifts (incl. changes in societal values and paradigms);
• Consumption factors (i.e. factors explaining the stimulation of additional consumption and production activities), enabling a connection to rebound mechanisms and triggers.

In total, 14 papers yielded 120 behavioral design strategies clustered into 7 main areas, predominantly targeting the product-service system level. Higher-level systemic interventions (e.g., inclusion of new information flows) emerged as the most effective strategies. The consumption factor with the highest number of identified strategies was consumer choice, whereas company choices had the fewest.

By providing a consolidation of actionable design strategies, this research has the potential to empower designers, researchers, and policymakers to move sustainability efforts from "less bad" towards "good enough." Future research includes the development of a catalogue of design strategies, and a selection procedure to support their implementation into the early stages of design.