The friction
Which factor is the primary deterrent to sustainable habit formation: cost, inconvenience or lack of social proof?
Research designed for real life.
The Ecohance Panel maps the intention-action gap through five low-friction data collection waves, spaced exactly 14 days apart from August to October 2026.
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM
What stops sustainable intentions from becoming action?
We test whether economic cost, physical inconvenience or lack of social proof creates the greatest friction in daily sustainable decision-making.
DESIGNQuantitative longitudinal cohort
POPULATIONAges 16-45
TARGET SAMPLEN = 500 baseline
SCHEDULEFive waves · 14 days apart
Three questions shape the panel.
Intention-action decay
How does stated intent correlate with reported execution 14 days later?
Choice architecture
Does social-norm framing increase the likelihood of a pro-environmental decision?
What we expect to observe.
The convenience hypothesis
Time and effort will be cited as friction more often than economic cost.
The social proof hypothesis
Participants exposed to peer-norm information will show stronger habit retention.
The attrition hypothesis
Behavioural intent will peak at Wave 1 and decay by Wave 3 without structural support.
Every decision is documented.
Instrument
A custom five-question visual survey combining discrete choices, behavioural recall and friction attribution.
Cohort integrity
Registration closes after Wave 1 so no late entrant disrupts the longitudinal time series.
Quality control
Responses under five seconds are flagged. Fewer than three waves excludes a record from primary analysis.
Data separation
Email addresses are used for authentication and notification, separate from analysis responses.
Analysis
Descriptive statistics and time-series analysis track friction, retention and intention-action decay.
Open science
An anonymised dataset and working paper are planned after the study and privacy review.
DOCUMENT REGISTER
Methods should be inspectable.
Read the complete pre-registration protocol, consent statement and participant guide before joining.