Inside the Nudge Unit

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), also known unofficially as the “Nudge Unit”, is an organisation that was set up to apply nudge theory (behavioural economics and psychology) to try to improve government policy and services as well as to save the UK government money.

Originally set up as a team within the Cabinet Office, it is now a limited company, Behavioural Insights Limited. It is headed by psychologist David Halpern. Although specific ideas devised by BIT have been imitated in several other countries, David Halpern suggests that the unit's underlying methodology has still not been widely understood. He said BIT's ‘greatest legacy' would be not any individual behavioural insight, but its commitment to creating a set of variants on any given intervention and testing them against each other. He called the cycle of making variants, testing them, learning what works best and starting again from there “radical incrementalism”.

The book states that if you want to encourage a behaviour, make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST). These four simple principles for applying behavioural insights are based on the Behavioural Insights Team's own work and the wider academic literature.

There is a large body of evidence on what influences behaviour, and we do not attempt to reflect all its complexity and nuances here. But we have found that policy makers and practitioners find it useful to have a simple, memorable framework to think about effective behavioural approaches.

With this in mind, the principles from EAST are:

1. Make it Easy
· Harness the power of defaults. We have a strong tendency to go with the default or pre-set option, since it is easy to do so. Making an option the default makes it more likely to be adopted.
· Reduce the ‘hassle factor' of taking up a service. The effort required to perform an action often puts people off. Reducing the effort required can increase uptake or response rates.
· Simplify messages. Making the message clear often results in a significant increase in response rates to communications. In particular, it's useful to identify how a complex goal can be broken down into simpler, easier actions.

2. Make it Attractive
· Attract attention. We are more likely to do something that our attention is drawn towards. Ways of doing this include the use of images, colour or personalisation.
· Design rewards and sanctions for maximum effect. Financial incentives are often highly effective, but alternative incentive designs — such as lotteries — also work well and often cost less.

3. Make it Social
· Show that most people perform the desired behaviour. Describing what most people do in a particular situation encourages others to do the same. Similarly, policy makers should be wary of inadvertently reinforcing a problematic behaviour by emphasising its high prevalence.
· Use the power of networks. We are embedded in a network of social relationships, and those we come into contact with shape our actions.
Governments can foster networks to enable collective action, provide mutual support, and encourage behaviours to spread peer-to-peer.
· Encourage people to make a commitment to others. We often use commitment devices to voluntarily ‘lock ourselves' into doing something in advance. The social nature of these commitments is often crucial.

4. Make it Timely
· Prompt people when they are likely to be most receptive. The same offer made at different times can have drastically different levels of success.
Behaviour is generally easier to change when habits are already disrupted, such as around major life events.
· Consider the immediate costs and benefits. We are more influenced by costs and benefits that take effect immediately than those delivered later. Policy makers should consider whether the immediate costs or benefits can be adjusted (even slightly), given that they are so influential.
· Help people plan their response to events. There is a substantial gap between intentions and actual behaviour. A proven solution is to prompt people to identify the barriers to action, and develop a specific plan to address them.

The second half of the book is a little repetitive with few insights being added. But saying that, it's definitely worth reading if you want to enact effective change.