Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think This page intentionally left blank Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour Peter John, Sarah Cotterill, Alice Moseley, Liz Richardson, Graham Smith, Gerry Stoker and Corinne Wales B L O O M S B U R Y A C A D E M I C First published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Academic an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY, UK and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Copyright © 2011 by Peter John, Sarah Cotterill, Alice Moseley, Liz Richardson, Graham Smith, Gerry Stoker and Corinne Wales. This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact Bloomsbury Academic. CIP records for this book are available from the British Library and the Library of Congress ISBN 987-1-84966-059-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-84966-058-7 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-84966-475-2 (ebook PDF) This book is produced using paper that is made from wood grown in managed, sustainable forests. It is natural, renewable and recyclable. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group Cover designer – Hugh Adams, AB3 Design Cover image: Artwork/Image permissions information www.bloomsburyacademic.com Foreword The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP Minister for Planning and Decentralization The Big Society is based on a simple idea: that Britain derives its strength not solely from the actions of government, but from the ingenuity of individuals and communities, entrepreneurs and volunteers – men and women who contribute, in a myriad of different ways, to the nation’s prosperity and well- being. And in much the same way that government alone is not responsible for the nation’s triumphs and successes, government alone cannot provide the whole solution to many of the challenges we face as a society. Our ability to meet the challenges of climate change, for instance, hinges to a signifi cant extent on individuals’ willingness to alter their lifestyle and cut their carbon footprint. Or take public health. The degree to which today’s 30-year-olds choose to eat well and exercise regularly will have a profound impact on the demands on the National Health Service in the future. The difference between success and failure – between obesity and good health, between sustainable consumption and a carbon binge – lies in how people decide to act, individually and collectively. In other words, making Britain a better place to live depends on each of us changing our behaviour. The question is: What can government do for its part to encourage responsible, altruistic and civic-minded behaviour? For decades now, successive administrations of different political affi liations have sought to achieve social policy objectives by pulling on the levers of central power. Whether the aim was to curb anti-social behaviour, improve health or encourage recycling, the standard approach to policy-making went something like this: a group of experts was convened in Whitehall to discuss the problem; civil servants summarized the consensus in the room about what were considered the most effective solutions; they codifi ed those solutions into a set of ‘best practice’; public services everywhere were mandated, by means of legislation, guidance or inspection, to put that best practice into effect. This approach is often referred to as ‘centralism’. The argument put forward by the proponents of centralism has always been that it represents a means of enforcing minimum standards and making struggling services buck up their ideas. But there is a growing recognition today, not only that centralism has reached the point of diminishing returns, but also that, in some cases, an excess of central control has done harm. It has v vi NUDGE, NUDGE, THINK, THINK created costly bureaucracy; distorted the way public services are delivered; and sought to impose nationally designed solutions, whereas Britain’s communities are astonishingly diverse in their needs and natures. Crucially, when it comes to the subtle question of behaviour change, centralism often presents an all-too-rigid answer. In cases of totally unacceptable and unethical behaviour, centrally determined legislation and punishment are perfectly appropriate; I doubt whether any of us would seriously object to strong criminal sanctions against murder or fraud. A measure of central prescription may also be an appropriate means of dissuading some specifi c types of harmful behaviour – I’m personally in favour of the ban on smoking in public places, for example. But much of the time, and in many areas of policy, simply telling people what to do can be wholly counterproductive, especially at a time when deference is low and mistrust of politicians and civil servants is high. Take housing policy. As a growing nation, Britain needs more homes. In the noughties, government sought to get those homes built by setting national and regional targets. But people bridled at the imposition; and the effect of targets was not to increase house-building rates but to entrench local opposition to new building. Some of the old Regional Spatial Strategies that contained the targets attracted literally thousands of critical responses. The tragedy is that the default response in some places is now to resist any development at all costs, including new homes which families need, offi ce space which would support new businesses and jobs, and municipal buildings which could be the neighbourhood’s crowning glory. In other cases, the mere threat of heavy-handed attempts by offi cialdom to do the right thing by enforcing a standard of behaviour – for example, punishing people for the incorrect use of recycling bins – has diminished people’s appetite to take control for themselves and sapped their enthusiasm to play their part. The bottom line is that policy-makers need a broader range of tools than the hammer of direction and instruction. They need to fi nd more intelligent and more effective ways to encourage responsible behaviour by individuals and communities. This represents a major challenge to parts of the policy-making machine in Whitehall and town halls alike. When pulling the old central levers of power is deep in the muscle memory, it can be hard to let go. But government at all levels needs to get better at engaging in a proper conversation with communities; giving them information, not rules; incentives, not diktats. Instead of telling people what to do in response to social, environmental or FOREWORD vii economic challenges, we need to get better at giving them the space to make up their own minds, and asking them what they think the solutions should be. It’s an approach which has its roots in assuming the best of people, and in their ability to be rational, generous and fair. I greatly welcome, therefore, the work that the authors of this book have carried out to analyse the effectiveness of a range of different approaches to encouraging responsible behaviour – from the ‘nudge’ of giving cues and signals, introducing small incentives and harnessing the power of peer pressure, to the ‘think’ of providing people with information and asking them to refl ect on the evidence before making choices. This book’s great strength is that it gives practical and tangible examples of the benefi ts and shortcomings of a variety of different approaches, and looks at a broad range of different policies and scenarios, with examples including organ donation and voting, and locations ranging from suburbs to urban estates. As the authors themselves make clear, it is still early days for the exploration and analysis of these different methods of changing behaviours, and the research raises questions as well as answers: How signifi cant are the changes encouraged by these techniques? Are these changes transitory, or sustained? Does investing in nudge and think represent an effective use of public money compared to other methods? And does government need to seek public consent for the more widespread use of such techniques? The main fi nding, however, is crystal clear: public bodies can, when they put their minds to it, work with communities in different, less directive, more effective ways to deliver behaviour change in the wider interest of society. Adapting to different ways of working will, I suspect, be a steep learning curve for many policy-makers. For the light that it sheds on the path ahead, this book is both timely and welcome. vii The Authors Peter John is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at University College London. He previously held the Hallsworth Chair of Governance at the University of Manchester, where he co-directed the Institute of Political and Economic Governance (IPEG). His books include Analysing Public Policy (2nd edition 2012) and Making Policy Work (2011). Sarah Cotterill works at the University of Manchester and is an adviser for the NIHR Research Design Service. She has a PhD from the University of Leeds on Partnership Working in Local Electronic Government and she has many years of work experience in housing and community regeneration. Alice Moseley is a Research Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter. She was previously at the University of Southampton where she was part of the Rediscovering the Civic project team. She has published on a variety of public policy topics, including joined-up government and evidence-based policy. She is currently working on an Economic and Social Research Council research project on succession outcomes in UK government executive agencies. Liz Richardson is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Economic Governance (IPEG), University of Manchester. She has conducted research on community self-help, local representative democracy and the re- design of public services, working with policy makers in local and central government and the voluntary sector, as well as hundreds of community organizations. She is the author of DIY Community Action (2008) and a Director of the National Communities Resource Centre, a charity which supports community volunteers. Graham Smith is Professor of Politics in the Centre for Citizenship, Globalization and Governance (C2G2) and the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) at the University of Southampton. His research interests include democratic theory and practice, environmental politics and the social economy. His most recent book is Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (2009). Gerry Stoker is Professor of Politics and Governance at the University of Southampton, and Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Globalization and Governance (C2G2). His most recent book is Governance Theory and Practice: a Cross Disciplinary Approach (2010, with Vasudha Chhotray). Corinne Wales is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship, Globalization and Governance (C2G2), University of Southampton, where she was part of the Rediscovering the Civic project te am. She has conducted research on deliberative democratic theory and practice, the institutionalization of trust in public policy, risk communication and citizen behaviour change. Acknowledgements This book comes out of a research project that took place between September 2007 and June 2010 called ‘Rediscovering the Civic: Achieving Better Outcomes in Public Policy’, which was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the North West Improvement and Effi ciency Partnership (NWIEP) (RES-177-25-0002). We fi rst thank the funders for giving us the opportunity to engage in such an interesting and relevant piece of work, applying the experimental method to study public participation in the UK for the fi rst time. It was a big act of faith by our government co- sponsors in a relatively slow-moving project. In spite of the time it took us to complete our work, we believe that the fi ndings are as relevant as ever as the UK government sets out on a programme of work to promote the Big Society. Our particular gratitude goes to Paul McCafferty, then head of Local Governance Research Unit at CLG, who helped organize the fi nance for the project. We are also very grateful to the team at CLG for their assistance throughout, in particular Arianna Haberis and Wendy Russell Barter. We would like to thank the members of the advisory group to the project, who gave of their time so freely: Matthew Taylor, Chris Wyatt, Arianna Haberis, Mike Saward, Henry Tam, Joyce Redfern, Barry Quirk, Shamitt Saggar, Lawrence Pratchett and Jane Martin. We also thank those who spoke at our fi nal event on the 23 June 2010, in particular Philip Blond, Toby Blume, Sue Goss and the Minister for Planning and Decentralization, Greg Clark MP, as well as members of the advisory group. We owe a great debt to our administrator, Margaret Holmes, who coped so well in organizing such a complex and multifaceted project, especially its fi nances and sub-contracts, and who helped make the fi nal event such a success. We are especially thankful to the researchers who worked alongside us, in particular Hanhua Liu, Tessa Brannan and Hisako Nomura. Hanhua contributed to the fi rst recycling randomized controlled trial and on our separately reported survey work. Tessa worked with Peter John on the original Wythenshawe Get Out the Vote experiment reported in Chapter 4. Hisako worked on the analysis of the deliberation project and came up with the food waste feedback experiment idea and led this part of our work, which we report in Chapter 3. We are very pleased that Helen Margetts collaborated with us on the research that forms the basis for Chapter 6, and we thank both Tobias Escher and Stéphane Reissfelder for their energy and ingenuity in planning and organizing the experiments at the Oxford Internet ix