Turning the spotlight on the future of Nudge techniques

Gerry StokerSouthampton and Canberra

@ProfStoker

Propositions for discussion

• The recent success of behaviour change policy combined with its commitment to using experimental testing of policy is to be welcomed

• But we are limited to picking of “low hanging fruit” if the paradigm does not develop?

• Difference between commercial and non-commercial development

• Debate complicated by ambiguity in terminology: Nudge, Behaviour Change, choice architecture

NUDGE: a different way of thinking about implementation

• Drawing on behavioural economics and social psychology to recognise the significance of information processing in decision-making

• Small brains …complex world • Standard tricks that humans use to deal with that …• They pay attention to pressing things• They do what others do • They develop consistent patterns of behaviour

Doubt 1: Human decision-making picture not full enough

• Fast thinking ....intuitive, rapid and immediate ....more the realm of Nudge? (type 1)

• Slow thinking ...reasoned, evidence-based, value-focused ... more the realm of Think? (type 2)

• Donating money closer to type 1

• Donating time closer to type 2

Humans are not just cognitive misers

• The interplay between moments of fast and slow thinking

• Degrees of fast thinking

• Degrees of slow thinking

Wider Doubts 2: too much work on compliance

• Behavioural change methods seem to work best in encouraging immediate compliance ( paying fines, signing up etc) but could it work at another elements of the customer relationship?

• Recognizing that all tools are now informational tools

• Does it operate with only a limited conception of citizenship?

Nudge Success Stories: more focused on responsibilities than rights

• Automatically enrolling individuals on to pension schemes has increased saving rates for those employed by large firms in the UK from 61 to 83%;

• Informing people who failed to pay their tax that most other people had already paid increased payment rates by over 5 percentage points;

• Encouraging jobseekers to actively commit to undertaking job search activities increased their chance of finding a new job;

• Prompting people to join the Organ Donor Register using reciprocity messages (‘if you needed an organ, would you take one?’) adds 100,000 people to the register in one year.

• Get Out the Vote

BIT website

Responsibilities Rights

Green and Gerber; John et al

Wider Doubts 3: Naive and Overly promotional

• Normative and ethical issues in some interventions

• Not so good when it comes to areas where consensus not so firm or there is controversy

• Over claiming about impact of behaviour change used on its own, while evidence suggests others tools also doing important work (HoL report)

Wider Doubts 4: Underplays long-term and the social

• Not sure its effects are repeatable in the long-term as citizens get wise to its tricks…

• OK need to visit • Behaviour change works on the design principle of “paving the

cow path” ( going where people were already going) but is less good at setting people down another path?

• Mere compliance versus private acceptance: norm internalisation better for lasting change?

• Social identity and dynamics • Examples based of persuasion and• Value shift

Doubts About Experiments: complexity makes clear answers harder to find

• Internal validity: common glitches become more common!

• External validity: does it work everywhere? The challenge of replication is much harder than people think!

• And then there is another question: does it work here? (Cartwright and Hardie, 2012)

• Complex models of causality generally are at work

And then there is the ironic politics of Nudge and Experiments

• Allowed space only at the margins of policy? • Big initiatives driven by political imperatives but not

experimented with ( pilots that are going to succeed)• Experiments fail then political test of “never asking a

question you don’t know the answer to”• Nudge “manipulation of information” raises political

alarm bells• Can only help where there is consensus!

How much further could it go?

• Could we use Nudge insights to shift the behaviour of organised interests as well as individual citizens?

• Could we use Nudge insights work in-house to shift patterns of behaviour among service providers as much as targeting customers?

• Can Nudge speak to people as citizens and not just customers?

• Non-commercial blazing the trail

Rules for Nudge Stage 2

• Make Nudge an add-on rather than standalone policy tool...so question becomes how could we add a Nudge element

• Or to put it another way all tools are informational so how you convey that information matters

• Return to the full Mindspace list

• Expand the targets for Nudge: rights and groups

MINDSPACE

The future is Nudge +

• Nudge in combination with structural or institutional change

• Wider strategies of behaviour change that draw on other social dynamics and persuasion

• Nudge combined with Think

Grass not always greener

• Power of other tools also constrained ....fast thinking still impacts

• Even in deliberative contexts:• focus on immediate available ideas• Weigh risks badly• Sift evidence only partially• Fudge choices

Towards a choice framework

Individual Habitual Nudge informational or default Individual Intuitive Nudge socialIndividual Value shift Persuasion plus NudgeCollective action Nudge plus institutional supportAction blocked by inequality Nudge plus structural measuresAction in contested arena Nudge plus Think

CHANGE FOCUS TOOL