Philippa Ward, a partner at environmental charity Global Action Plan, asks how ‘Nudge’ can change our behaviour.
Does your partner or housemate do things that you’re itching to change? Maybe they don’t recycle, or never buy milk when it runs out. Just telling them to do things differently doesn’t work. Leaving helpful and slightly passive-aggressive notes doesn’t do the trick. Is there any way to get people to behave differently?
Imagine that you are in the government. Instead of wishing you could change your partner’s behaviour, you wish you could alter the irksome habits of 67 million people. Whether it is less littering or more recycling, the public doesn’t always co-operate in being conscientious citizens – even when it is in their own interests, such as saving money on their energy bill.
Telling them to do things differently doesn’t work. Putting up stern signs only has a small effect.
Instead, the government started to turn to Nudge. You may remember Nudge: it was the zeitgeist in 2010 when David Cameron was further away from the sticky, tricky business of re-election and looking to do things differently. The Nudge Unit was born at Number 10 and starting trying to tackle everything from upping organ donation to increasing tax returns.
Move forward to 2014: the Nudge Unit was partly spun-off in the bonfire of the quangoes. The government is looking for quick results, rather than long-term changes, that will look good in an upcoming election. However, the view from Global Action Plan (GAP), the UK’s main behaviour change charity, is that Nudge has become a bit more embedded, albeit a bit less headline-grabbing.
There are a few signals of this. One is the All-Party Parliamentary Behaviour Change Group, set up by Laura Sandys MP and co-ordinated by GAP.
At the last meeting, which included guest speaker David Halpern of the Nudge Unit, the discussion was so absorbing that we overran and had to continue conversations in the corridor. Attendees included global businesses and local housing associations, MPs and the NHS. Nudge is an exciting potential solution that reaches across sectors and stakeholders. It means practical answers that work with people as they are right now, not where we would ideally like them to be.
These discussions are absolutely central to sustainability and the environmental sector. All the technology we are capable of creating won’t solve the problems facing us – we need to understand people and work with them to create solutions. That is the only successful route. It is sometimes a messy and time-consuming one but it is the only way to embed long-term sustainable behaviours.
So far, the evidence for that long-term change is patchy. There are some great examples starting to come out of business, such as Anglian Water’s Keep It Clear, which won the Business in the Community’s Engaging Customers on Sustainability award. Another award-winning example is our very own Operation TLC, which aims to save energy across the NHS. These programmes show that the upfront investment is worth the massive savings to the public purse. But it takes a courageous organisation to make the initial spend, so we need to start building the business case in every sector.
We need more evidence to paint a picture of what behaviour change can do, to policymakers and budget-holders. Please do leave your favourite examples below, or drop me an email. And if you have any tips for successful behaviour change on your partner, feel free to add those too!
