SUMMARY
The aim of much government policy is to bring about
changes in people's behaviour and so a government's success will
often depend on their ability to implement effective behaviour
change interventions whilst, at the same time, avoiding significant
harmful side effects.
Governments can use a variety of different types
of policy interventions to change the behaviour of the population.
These range from providing information or undertaking campaigns
of persuasion that promote certain behaviour, to taxation and
legislation. In Table 1 of this report we set out a schematic
list of types of intervention.
The currently influential book Nudge by Richard
Thaler and Cass Sunstein advocates a range of non-regulatory interventions
that seek to influence behaviour by altering the context or environment
in which people choose, and seek to influence behaviour in ways
which people often do not notice. This approach differs from more
traditional government attempts to change behaviour, which have
either used regulatory interventions or relied on overt persuasion.
The current Government have taken a considerable interest in the
use of "nudge interventions". Consequently, one aim
of this inquiry was to assess the evidence-base for the effectiveness
of "nudges". However, we also examined evidence for
the effectiveness of other types of policy intervention, regulatory
and non-regulatory, and asked whether the Government make good
use of the full range of available evidence when seeking to change
behaviour.
We heard evidence that, although much was understood
about human behaviour from basic research, there was relatively
little evidence about how this understanding could be applied
in practice to change the behaviour of populations ("applied
research at a population level"). We make some recommendations
to address this issue.
Although we acknowledge that further applied research
at a population level is needed, we also found that the available
evidence supports a number of conclusions. Our central finding
is that non-regulatory measures used in isolation, including "nudges",
are less likely to be effective. Effective policies often use
a range of interventions.
We concluded that it is important to consider the
whole range of possible interventions when policy interventions
are designed. We place particular emphasis on this conclusion
because the evidence we received indicated that the Government's
preference for non-regulatory interventions has encouraged officials
to exclude consideration of regulatory measures when thinking
about behaviour change. Though there is a lack of applied research
on changing behaviour at a population level, there is other available
evidence that the Government need to use to better effect. We
were therefore disappointed to find that, although we received
some examples of evidence-based policies, such as policies on
energy-efficient products and smoking cessation services, we were
also given many examples of policies that had not taken account
of available evidence, including policies on food labelling and
alcohol pricing.
We also found that a lot more could, and should,
be done to improve the evaluation of interventions. This is not
only good practice but would help to build a body of research
that could inform effective policies targeting population-level
behaviour change.
Understanding behaviour and behaviour change are
necessary for developing effective and efficient policies in all
areas. Although this report draws on case studies that focus on
the Department of Health and the Department for Transport, our
conclusions and recommendations are directed to all Government
departments.
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