Changing behaviour: A public policy perspective

4. Behavioural Change at the Individual Level

There is a range of theories and evidence around the forces that influence behavioural change at the level of the individual.

a. Classic Conditioning and Conditionality Theories

Classic conditioning and conditionality are fundamental building blocks for understanding behaviour and behavioural change. Classical conditioning refers to when an unconditioned stimulus, such as food, becomes associated with another stimulus, such as a bell (e.g. Pavlov’s dog). Even highly complex behaviours can often be explained through long chains of such associations. Behavioural change is achieved through learning new associations, or by removing existing associations. Hence, advertising seeks to associate a new product with existing stimuli that are experienced as positive. Until 15 years ago, for example, Australians were exposed to advertisements associating smoking with fun, sexual attractiveness, glamour and sophistication. Australia (both at the federal and state levels) has progressively restricted the promotion of tobacco products to limit the association of tobacco products with positive images.

Work over recent decades has shown that people appear to be innately predisposed to learn some associations (e.g. between a taste and subsequent nausea) in a single experience. It is much more difficult, however, for people to learn the more complex causal associations that characterise modern society, such as between diet and long-term health. Nevertheless, some understanding of classic conditioning is useful, for instance, ensuring that in communication campaigns the desired behavioural change is linked as much as possible with stimuli that are generally experienced to be positive such as linking recycling to smiling, happy people. Or, conversely, ensuring that an undesirable behaviour such as smoking is not associated with positive stimuli.

Conditionality is a fundamental tenet of learning—a reward or punishment is contingent on the behaviour of the individual. It is a common feature of our social and economic lives and is integral to everyday notions of responsibility—that people’s actions involve consequences. Policy makers tend to think of conditionality in terms of conditions attached to benefits or the use of public services, such as the requirement to seek work while on unemployment benefit. This type of more sophisticated use of conditionality, which also harnesses understandings from behavioural theories around commitment, reciprocity and mutuality, will be discussed in more detail in the following sections.

b. Cognitive Consistency Theory

The cognitive consistency theory proposes that people are motivated to seek consistency between their beliefs, values and attitudes and their behaviours. This can be a powerful policy tool in certain circumstances where a commitment can be extracted from the individual to behave in a way that is consistent with their existing beliefs and attitudes. Extracting a promise from restaurant-goers, for example, that they will call if they change plans reduces ‘no-shows’ compared to simply asking customers to do so.⁸ Quit lines that support smokers’ attempts to stop smoking, which operate in each state of Australia, also make use of cognitive consistency and commitments.

There is a growing number of other policy interventions that use such commitments. The UK Government, for example, has encouraged schools to use home-school agreements to increase parental commitment to certain behaviours. Parents are asked to formally sign agreements that set out the respective responsibilities of the parents (e.g. ensuring the child attends regularly, supporting the school’s homework policy) and of the school. Such agreements also harness conditionality and mutuality.

However, there are limits to the effectiveness of such commitments, particularly those made without other supportive measures. There is strong evidence, for example, that people do not always behave in a way that is consistent with their attitudes and beliefs, even if commitments are entered into. The gap is particularly acute for environmental issues. In such cases convenience is said to be a major factor⁹—people are more likely to keep to commitments such as recycling waste if it is convenient to do so. Also, if people are asked to commit to something that is not solidly consistent with their beliefs or attitudes, they are less likely to comply even if they are willing to make the initial commitment—thus information campaigns aimed at changing attitudes may be a necessary precursor to seeking commitment.

c. Social Cognitive Theories

Social cognitive theory focuses on skill and competency and emphasises the importance of enhancing a person’s behavioural capability and self-confidence. Self-efficacy is a key concept

in the theory and refers to a person’s confidence in their ability to take action and to persist with that action such as persisting with lifestyle changes for health or environmental reasons. Self-efficacy can be increased in a variety of ways, including by:

setting small incremental goals—when someone achieves a small goal like exercising for 10 minutes each day for a week, their self-efficacy increases and the next, more challenging goal seems more achievable and their persistence is greater
reinforcement—reward the achievement of incremental goals with feedback, praise and/or a tangible motivating reward
monitoring—feedback from self-monitoring or recordkeeping can reduce anxiety about a person’s ability to achieve a behavioural change, thereby increasing self-efficacy. Self- monitoring, for example, for controlling obesity, can work best when combined with a support group—indicating the importance of peer support.

Groups such as Weight Watchers and Landcare focus particularly on improving members’self-efficacy. Landcare groups provide feedback, ongoing advice and assistance for landholders in the process of adopting new natural resource management techniques.

d. Heuristics and Biases

It has been documented that humans use mental short-cuts or heuristics and display consistent biases in decision-making.¹⁰ This is a way of dealing with the overload of information and decision-making required in modern society, but one which can make people prone to misjudgement in certain circumstances and inhibit behavioural change.

Availability and simulation. These are two rules of thumb used by many people to judge how likely something is to happen, and hence guide decision-making. People tend to assume that events that they can easily call to mind (availability) or are easy to imagine (simulation) are more frequent and therefore more likely to occur. Hence people tend to be more nervous about flying than driving because air crashes are easy to recall and capture the imagination.
Anchoring. Behaviour is strongly affected by default options. People tend to stick to a starting point even when it is arbitrary. Countries with presumed consent regulations for organ donation, for example, have a higher rate of organ transplant than those—like Australia—which operate an opt-in system. One insight of anchoring for policy makers is to set the default option in appropriate circumstances to be one most consistent with the wider public interest. Policy makers also need to be aware of the inertia associated with anchoring. One reason why the introduction of choice and competition into a previously regulated industry may lead to fewer changes of supplier than expected, for example, is likely to be due, in part, to anchoring behaviour.
Scarcity. People tend to value things that are scarce or likely to run out. This is one reason why a free product or service may not be valued highly by citizens (where the absence of any price signal can be interpreted that the product or service is in unlimited supply). This partly explains why some programmes such as HIV-AIDS programmes charge a nominal fee for condoms—to increase their value to the user. Having to queue or wait for a product or service can also be used as a proxy for scarcity.
Loss or gain. People tend to value things differently depending on whether they are gaining or losing them. Loss tends to be felt more keenly than gain. An application within the health area, for example, suggests that messages stressing the potentially negative consequences of ill-health are likely to be more effective than those that describe the benefits in terms of potential gains.¹¹ This insight has also been used toincrease savings. In the USA a three-year trial was conducted within which employees could choose to join a pension scheme. Employees were asked to agree that a proportion of any future pay rise would be directed to their pension. By avoiding asking for any contributions from existing earnings the scheme avoided the disproportionate psychological pain of loss. The trial was successful with the average pension savings rate rising from around 3% to more than 11% over three years.¹²
Peak experience and recency. People tend to place greater emphasis on short-lived peaks (or troughs) of experience than they do on average experiences. People also place greater weight on things that have happened more recently. This tends to reinforce the influence of the rule of thumb of availability discussed above. One suggested policy application of these observations is in the structuring of punishments for criminal behaviour. If the only object of imprisonment was to maximise its deterrent effect it could be characterised by peaks of discomfort and these should increase towards the end of the sentence. It is striking that most prison sentences have exactly the reverse pattern—a fairly constant and monotonous level of discomfort and decreasing unpleasantness towards the end.
Discounting. Most people heavily discount future costs or benefits compared to immediate costs or benefits. The further into the future the costs and benefits are likely to occur the more they are discounted. This is a key tendency in helping to explain the difficulties people experience in making lifestyle changes where many of the health or environmental benefits are longer-term. It is a key barrier, for example, to giving up smoking as the harmful effects of tobacco are neither immediate nor obvious—most only manifest themselves after years of smoking. It is also crucial to note that while all people tend to discount, those living chaotic or impoverished lives apply especially high discount rates as a result of their immediate circumstances—making it less likely that they will make longer-term investments in their health, welfare or education.¹³

8 D. Halpern et al, Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour, p. 19.

9 J. Collins et al, Carrots, Sticks and Sermons, pp. 25–6.

10 A.Tversky and D. Kahneman, ‘Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’, Science, N.S., Vol. 185, No. 4157, 27 September 1974, pp. 1124–31, cited in D. Halpern et al, Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour, p. 19.

11 D. Halpern et al, Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour, p. 20.

12 R. Thaler and S. Benartzi 2000, Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioural Economics to Increase Employee Saving <http://economics.uchicago.edu/download/save-more.pdf>, cited in D. Halpern et al, Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour, p. 61.

13 D. Halpern et al, Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour, p. 21.

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