Tackling Wicked Problems : A Public Policy Perspective

9.The Importance of Achieving Sustained Behavioural Change

Successfully addressing most wicked problems requires achieving sustained changes in behaviour. However, for many wicked policy problems influencing human behaviour is very complex. For these problems, the effectiveness of traditional approaches to influencing behaviour (e.g. legislation, sanctions, regulations, taxes and subsidies) may be limited, without some additional tools and understanding of how to engage citizens in cooperative behavioural change.

Achieving sustained behavioural change is usually a key component of tackling wicked problems because it has become increasingly clear that government cannot simply ‘deliver’ key policy outcomes to a disengaged and passive public. In the areas of welfare, health, crime, employment, education and the environment it is clear that achieving significant progress requires the active involvement and cooperation of citizens. Agencies may have more impact on key policy outcomes by using their limited resources to engage, involve and change the behaviour of users and other parties, than by concentrating on traditional policy tools and service delivery.

It is not just in Australia that there has been a growing policy interest in engaging citizens to achieve sustained behavioural change to assist in tackling wicked problems. The UK Government, for example, has recently convened a Behaviour Change Forum which is led by the Cabinet Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health, the Department for Transport, the Treasury, the Home Office, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Sustainable Development Commission. Its purpose is to:

exchange experience of behavioural change policies and their implementation
pool research and policy evaluation on behavioural change
disseminate research findings and good practice across government
advise on and promote common policy tools and support for those engaged in behaviourfocused policies.

The Canadian Government has also been actively interested in the area of behavioural change and has produced a set of guidelines known as the ‘Tools of Change’ for altering public behaviour around wicked problems in the environmental and health areas. These guidelines can be found at <http://www.toolsofchange.com>.

In order to achieve behavioural change to assist in tackling a wicked problem a basic understanding is required of key determinants of behaviour. How people behave is determined by many factors and is deeply embedded in social situations, institutional contexts and cultural norms. Nearly all public policy rests on assumptions about human behaviour; however, these are rarely made explicit or tested against the available evidence. The Australian Public Service Commission has recently published a discussion paper, Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective,³⁰ that outlines the key theories and empirical evidence about behavioural change and draws out the implications for improving policy making and programme implementation in the APS.

30 Australian Public Service Commission 2007, Changing Behaviour: A Public Policy Perspective <http://www.apsc.gov.au>