2. Experimentation as an approach to policymaking Behavioural insights to inform policymaking How can governments use new behavioural insights to inform social policy and practice? As advances in behavioural science and psychology have shown, the way we act can be counter– intuitive to the assumptions of traditional policy instruments. One example of this is a UK experiment to apply behavioural insights to reduce fraud, error and debt in tax collection. Based on hypotheses around what would motivate people to attend to deadlines, guidelines and criteria for tax administration – such as using more personalised language, highlighting social norms and local behaviour and rewarding desired behaviour – the Cabinet Office ‘Behavioural Insights Team’ worked together with relevant departments to design eight randomised control trials (RCTs) to test how these insights affect practice. By making relatively minor changes to communication methods – using more personalised language in letters, including statistics of social norms such as others’ response times, adapting the layout of forms – the teams were able to test how useful these insights were in preventing fraud, error and default in the public sector. The results were impressive: one trial investigating whether informing people how many others in their area had already paid their tax could boost payment rate advanced £160 million of tax debts to the Exchequer over the six week period of the trial. Overall, the trials showed effect sizes of up to 30 per cent in preventing fraud, error and debt through better understanding of human behaviour.16 The experimental approach allowed the team to adapt and learn from their insights, making small adjustments to practice and monitoring their effect. Randomisation allowed the team to test
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