Empowering change: A self-control perspective on how choice architecture interventions can promote sustainable behavior change

Choice architecture interventions have been recognized as effective tools for promoting behavior change. While existing descriptive frameworks and taxonomies can help elucidate the important role of micro-environments in shaping behavior, such approaches rarely and inconsistently localize underlying psychological mechanisms, leaving it open when and why such interventions work (or not). Here, we argue that choice architecture interventions primarily operate by influencing self-control processes that immediately precede behavioral enactment. By bridging the two research lines on choice architecture and self-control, we conceptually map how different types of choice architecture interventions can facilitate sustainable behavior change by acting upon specific components of the self-control process. We thereby address the need for i) a better integration of choice architecture interventions into behavioral theories by clarifying the psychological mechanisms underlying their effects and ii) a stronger consideration of self-control processes in explaining sustainable behavior. We derive testable hypotheses from our approach for future empirical research and discuss implications of our research for evidence-based intervention design to promote sustainable behavior change.