Social Sustainability
Status Quo Bias
The tendency to prefer things to stay as they are — a fundamental barrier to sustainable behaviour and policy change.
Definition
Status quo bias is the cognitive tendency to prefer the current state of affairs, treating change from the baseline as a loss even when alternatives are objectively better. Documented by Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988), it explains why defaults dominate decisions — from pension enrolment to green energy tariffs — and why incumbent systems persist: the effort, uncertainty and loss aversion attached to switching outweigh abstract gains, for individuals and institutions alike.
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