I got this sense a few years ago, that if people could see the numbers that made up their environmental footprint (such as the litres of water they used in a shower or the number trees felled to make their toilet paper) in an immediate and easy-to-understand way, then this data must, absolutely must, cause the person the use less resources, right?

I had such a strong hunch about this connection that it has obsessed me ever since.

But there was a glitch. Every time I would google terms like “environmental data”, “showing data” or “measuring environmental footprint”, I just wasn’t finding any academic research on the field, or even anything useful at all.

I even spent an afternoon at Stanford University’s library hunting through their environmental psychology section, trying to find literature on this topic. There were many books containing plenty of theories, but nothing specifically on the effect of showing people the numbers.

I didn’t work it out for quite some time. But then finally, after reading many papers on environmental psychology, I came across a paper by professor Archon Fung from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He used the terms “disclosure” and “transparency” to explain the phenomenon. Finally! I had found the proper terminology to advance my quest.

Then BAM! It was on.

What was fascinating, was that this team at Harvard had come to this field through the path of public policy.

I had discovered the field from my time working on environmental technology in Silicon Valley.

But both disciplines, significantly different and frequently siloed, had reach this same conclusion. It roughly goes like this,

We need to make the data issues publicly available, and when we do this, people or organisations naturally, without needing punishment or coercion, improve their scores dramatically.

It really makes sense when you think about it.

If companies all unanimously disclose the wages paid to both genders, then all those scores can easily be put together and sorted by rank, and then these scores can be publicly distributed.

The force of this disclosure of information will drive people in these companies to adjust their operations to get a better score. No one wants to be explicitly pinned as “America’s worst wage gap employer”, and every company will want to do a bit better than they did before.

There are big benefits on getting disclosure policies adopted by governments. Data that is free and open to the sunshine, is a quest that is generally perceived favourably, as explained in the Annual Review of Economics, University of Chicago,

“Mandatory disclosure of information is among the most ubiquitous and least controversial elements of public policy, often promoted as an attractive alternative to so-called ‘hard’ forms of regulation . . . Disclosure policies have proved highly attractive to legislators and regulators.”

Al Gore has also proclaimed that,

‘‘Putting information about local pollution into the hands of the public is the single most effective, commonsense tool available for protecting human health and the environment’’

(Mansur and Reeves 1996).

What this all means is that it can be pretty easy to get the government to mandate that environmental and social data is made public. This starts to get exciting when we investigate the case studies that show just what a powerful force for change public data can be.

The Toxic Release Inventory

One of the most striking examples of successful disclosure is the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). Simply requiring businesses to disclose their toxic chemical usage to the EPA spurred a whopping 45% reduction in toxic releases throughout the United States in only a few short years. (2) What is so interesting about the TRI though, is that it was never intended to reduce chemical use.

The Annual Review of Economics, University of Chicago, explains the success of the TRI,

“It was essentially a bookkeeping measure, intended to give the Environmental Protection Agency a sense of what was out there. The statute turned out to do a lot more. In fact, the requirement of disclosure, captured in the Toxic Release Inventory, may be the most unambiguous success story in all of environmental law.”

Dow Chemical environmental manager Millard Etling asserts that the TRI’s

‘‘Mandatory disclosure has done more than all other legislation put together in getting companies to voluntarily reduce emissions’’

(Seabrook 1991).

Carol Browner (1996), head of the EPA, argues that the TRI

‘‘is quite simply one of the most effective means we have in this country for protecting the health of our people, the health of our environment.’’

Environmentalists go further, calling the TRI

‘‘One of the most successful environmental laws in US history,’’

(Hearne 1996)

Energy Monitoring Devices

A review of energy monitoring devices placed in households that disclosed the home’s power consumption to homeowners suggested that such programs can induce 7% reduction among active users. (1)

Hygiene Grade Cards

Hygiene grade cards in Los Angeles restaurant windows that disclosed the restaurant’s hygiene score caused health inspection scores to improve and hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses to decrease 20%. (3)

The Carbon Disclosure Project

The Carbon Disclosure Project helped over 3,700 companies disclose information about carbon emissions. Since it started, Fortune 500 companies have reduced their carbon intensity by 2% per year. (4)

Energy Star Ratings

In Australia, today’s dishwashers, compared to those of 10 years ago, use 25% less water. This change is attributed to the introduction of mandatory energy labelling which discloses the energy consumption of the appliance to the prospective buyer at the time of purchase in the form of a star rating. (5) Read more on the success of Star Ratings here.

The Ambient Orb

A ball that discloses energy consumption by glowing red when a customer is using a lot of energy caused users of the device to reduce their peak energy use by up to 40%. (6) Read more on how to use colored lights to change behavior here.

Freedom and nudges

Using disclosure as a feature of public policy opens up the topic of “libertarian paternalism” that is dis