A ‘nudge’ in the right direction

Behavioural insights, more popularly known as ‘nudge theory’, refers to the practice of enhancing communications or processes in ways that make people more likely to take the action you are aiming for, without forcing people into compliance.

Generally, the methods are particularly well suited to public health outcomes, such as persuading people to give up smoking, wash their hands properly, practice safe sex, drink less, or exercise more. That said, the same methods can be applied to less corporeal targets – encouraging people to report a fault; make a payment online and helping people to recycle more. Even the notoriously ambiguous aims of increasing community engagement and empowerment can be supported by behaviour change principles when properly applied.

So how can councils put behaviour change to use?

Well, one framework commonly used to help develop successful behaviour change campaigns is EAST – Easy, Attractive, Social, Timely. According to this, interventions should make the desired behaviour:

A preferred action can be made easier by making it clearly understandable and simple to execute. Goals that appear difficult or long-term can be repackaged to make them feel more achievable. One way to do this is ‘chunking’: cutting complex actions down into smaller chunks. ‘Stoptober’ is an example of the difficult long-term goal of stopping smoking being chunked down into the more achievable goal of quitting for a month. Once people have managed a month, it’s more likely they will stop smoking altogether or cut down in future – the important thing is to at least get them started on that journey. An even easier way to get people to change is to set up the system so that they don’t need to actively do anything at all. When given free rein, people tend to take the path of least resistance. For example, changing pensions and organ donor registers to ‘opt-out’ instead of ‘opt-in’ is a simple way to harness the power of the default because most people won’t bother to opt out since it requires them to take action.

Change needs to be attractive. This can be in terms of presenting a short-term immediate ‘win’. For example, tax breaks are seen as complex and as a result, people disassociate from the actions needed to secure them, whereas the introduction of a 5p plastic bag charge in the UK was immediately attractive because everyone recognised the instant ‘win’ of saving money. A choice can also be made more attractive by ensuring it appears time-limited, to encourage people to act now or miss out. People attach more value to something that they think is scarce. ‘Attractive’ can also apply to attracting attention, whether this is with an arresting or controversial image, a personalised approach, or another way of standing out.

People are more likely to take a certain action if they feel that it is normal to do so. Successful campaigns often encourage the target audience to go with the social norm: for example, including a message in council tax letters to say that most people pay by direct debit can increase direct debit sign-ups. Similarly, messages from peers (whether included in a campaign from the outset or spread through social networks) have more impact than the same message coming from experts or organisations. Another aspect of human social behaviour is that we are more likely to act if we have made a commitment to do so. Asking people to sign a pledge or set a date for action increases the probability that they will see it through.

Interventions are most effective if they prompt people to change at a time when they are receptive. Take the example of design changes to food caddy labelling. The success of this project is partly due to how it reminds people what they can/can’t recycle at the exact moment they are recycling. Another example is the ‘Tick Tock Test’ campaign, which prompted people to test their smoke alarms when the hour changed. People’s habits are already disrupted as they change clocks in their houses, so it is a good time to add in an extra action that might otherwise get overlooked.