Behavioural science has made a major impact on important issues over the past decade, such as antimicrobial resistance, educational attainment, and sustainability. But it’s also clear that applied behavioural science needs to evolve to fulfil its true potential.

BIT has just published A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral Science - a landmark guide to the future of applied behavioral science. This Manifesto takes a clear-eyed look at challenges facing the field and offers 10 proposals to address them:

1. Use behavioral science as a lens that can help us see all issues better, rather than as a tool for limited challenges.
2. Build behavioral science into the design of organizations’ standard processes, to give it scale and sustainability.
3. Step back, understand the system, and use behavioral science to make targeted changes that lead to wider results.
4. Improve randomized controlled trials to better deal with the complexity of the real world.
5. Approaches successful in one context can fail in another – find out why, and how we can adapt them better.  
6. Don’t just think about biases in behavior – aim for practical theories that offer reliable ways of solving real-world problems.
7. Predict what people will do, confront when you were wrong, and change your views accordingly. 
8. Be humble about what you know, more curious about why people do things, and help others use behavioral science to improve their own lives. 
9. Use data science to identify, understand and reduce inequities.
10. Be realistic – recognize that behavioral scientists always bring their own values to whatever they do, and help the field to broaden its range of perspectives.

In this episode of Inside The Nudge Unit the Manifesto's author and Managing Director of BIT in the Americas, Michael Hallsworth, takes to the streets of New York City to explain more about what point 3, the importance of 'understanding the system' means in the context of behavioural science.

The journey will take him from Times Square to Governors Island, discussing oysters, pedestrian crossings, plastic bags and much more.

The full Manifesto for Applying Behavioural Science is available now for free on our website at www.bi.team.

This episode was recorded in and around New York City by Sabeena Singhani. Our thanks to Pete Malinowski of the Billion Oyster Project and Rebecca Taylor of the University of Sydney for kindly agreeing to be interviewed.

Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team.

Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/

Producer is Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

UK Government data shows that the great majority of people are concerned about climate and supportive of Net Zero by 2050.

However new research in BIT's new report 'How to build a Net Zero society' finds that most people find it hard to make more sustainable choices in their own lives, despite 9 in 10 wanting to do so. They want to see strong leadership from government and business to make green choices easier. 

Moreover, these high levels of public support aren't just in the abstract - there are big majorities in favour of a whole host of specific policy recommendations, including many often deemed more controversial.

For example 60% support frequent flyer levies, 74% higher prices on unsustainable consumer goods, 76% pedestrianised town centres, and 53% a carbon tax on meat.

The public are more enthusiastic still for a range of supportive policies such as interest-free loans for home improvements (88%), eco-labels on products (83%) and a simplified recycling (93%) system. People are up for getting Net Zero and are willing to do their bit and they are clamouring for help from government and business.

This episode of Inside The Nudge Unit features BIT's Head of Sustainability Toby Park and Andrew Schein and Izzy Brennan from the team discussing how to close this gap between public appetite and available opionts. There are lots of actions and policies that can be implemented that are backed by compelling evidence but too often the sustainable choice is hard, very hard, or completely opaque.

Listen to Toby, Andrew and Izzy as they explore how to remove these barriers and frictions so that instead it's the sustainable choices are the ones that are clear and easy.

More information:

The report 'How to build a Net Zero society' including the new research from the team discussed in this episode is available to download at: https://www.bi.team/publication/how-to-build-a-net-zero-society

Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team

Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/

Producer is Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

Inside The Nudge Unit is a podcast from The Behavioural Insights Team. In Episode 13 we talk to Dr Mark Friedberg and Rebecca Oran from the non-for-profit health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts.

Over the last two years, they have worked with BIT to create a successful Nudge Unit that has run around 60 interventions to improve health and healthcare. Many thousands of people have been reached by this work. 

But how did they go about it? And what lessons does this work offer for other organisations who are looking to set up their own dedicated behavioural science functions? To find out more, Mark and Rebecca are joined by Scott Young, BIT’s Private Sector lead and Michael Hallsworth, BIT’s Managing Director for the Americas. Together, they cover:

• How to convince senior leadership in the value of behavioural science
• Building wider engagement and overcoming scepticism
• The need for an internal champion
• How to broaden the use of behavioural insights beyond the initial wins   

More information:

Health Affairs article on the BCBSMA and BIT project: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20220520.237283

Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team

Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/

Producer is Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

Inside The Nudge Unit is a podcast from The Behavioural Insights Team. Episode 12 looks at recent work from the team in the areas of road safety, online fraud, conflict resolution and synthetic data.

Over the past decade, car crash death rates in the US for pedestrians rose by 36%, even as death rates fell for drivers and passengers. Over a third of San Francisco’s traffic deaths are caused when drivers make left turns and don't see the person in the crosswalk. 

BIT’s Lis Costa is joined by Maximillian Kroner from our US office to discuss a pilot study conducted by BIT on the roads of San Francisco that reduced average speeds of cars approaching potentially dangerous turns by 17%. 

If you’re not familiar with the concept of synthetic data you are not alone but its potential in the fields of behavioural science and policy research is considerable. BIT’s Head of Data Science and Technology Dr Paul Calcraft spoke to BIT’s Aisling Colclough to explain more.

Boko Haram in Nigeria has been conducting a violent campaign against the authorities for many years but increasingly members are turning away from the militant group, expressing remorse and asking to rejoin the society they were previously terrorising. BIT’s Dr Antonio Silva talks about the work the team have been doing to help with this reconciliation and reintegration challenge.

Finally this episode of Inside The Nudge Unit features a project from BIT France looking at how to help protect people from the ever present risk of online fraud. This project was run with and financed by the DITP - France’s Département for Public Transformation. Tom McMinigal from BIT France speaks to BIT’s Andrew Schein about his experience pretending to sell coffee machines through a fake online scam to help teach people how to avoid the actual ones. 

More information can be found on our website www.bi.team:

Road safety: https://www.bi.team/blogs/dangerous-left-turns-slow-by-17-in-traffic-study-leveraging-behavioral-science/

Synthetic data: https://www.bi.team/blogs/accelerating-public-policy-research-with-easier-safer-synthetic-data/

Peacebuilding: https://www.bi.team/blogs/can-mass-media-reduce-violent-conflict/

Online fraud: https://www.modernisation.gouv.fr/publications/comment-mieux-proteger-le-consommateur-des-fraudes-lachat-en-ligne-la-ditp-mobilise

Inside The Nudge Unit is a production of the Behavioural Insights Team

Editing and sound design is by Andy Hetherington of Studio Gibbon: https://www.facebook.com/thestudiogibbon/

Producer is Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

In the second of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Head of Energy & Sustainability, Toby Park, sits down with Cambridge University’s Professor Theresa Marteau, Moira Nicolson from the Cabinet Office and Valentine Quinio from the Centre for Cities to unpick three of the biggest areas we need to decarbonise to reach Net Zero by 2050: Food, Transport and Energy.

We know we cannot achieve Net Zero without behaviour change - the question is, how we can make it happen and devise effective solutions to decarbonise the way we produce and eat food, the way we travel and the way we heat and power our homes. 

Our guests discuss the barriers that prevent us from eating more sustainably, uptaking public transport and electric vehicles and switching to green energy suppliers; and the potential levers we can use to change the behaviours of individuals, corporations and governments.

Credits:

Production and editing by Andy Hetherington

Music by Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

In the first of a two-part climate change special, BIT’s Lis Costa sits down with Nobel Prize Winner Professor Richard Thaler, Cambridge University’s Lucia A. Reisch and BIT CEO and founder Professor David Halpern to answer one big question ahead of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference: Can we Nudge to Net Zero?

According to the Paris Agreement’s: Sixth Carbon Budget, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a 63% reduction in future emissions is required over the next decade or so. This is no mean feat! Such reductions will require substantial changes to our behaviour including the adoption of new technologies such as eco-friendly heating systems, and the reduction of our reliance on high carbon-footprint transportation systems such as flights and diesel cars.

Our guests discuss how this behaviour change can be achieved; the psychological biases and barriers that stand in our way; and the role that corporations and government must play to make climate-friendly behaviours tenable. 

So, can we Nudge to Net Zero? Listen to find out!

Credits:

Production and editing by Andy Hetherington

Music by Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4

On Christmas Eve December 2020, the World Health Organisation named Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and health inequities as 2 of the 10 global health threats to track in 2021. In 2019, we worked with the Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC) and PHARMAC to see how we can tackle both in Aotearoa New Zealand. The results of this work have just been published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, so we wanted to dedicate this episode of Inside the Nudge Unit to it. 

Peer-reviewed articles allow us to present the rigorous work that goes into running a Behavioural Insights (BI) project. However, journal articles often remove the work from its broader context and leave little space for describing the tribulations that go into running BI trials. In this episode, we cover the story of how the trial developed, and how it built on our earlier work in the UK and the work done by the Behavioural Economics Research Team in the Australian Department of Health (BERT) and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian government (BETA). 

We discuss how health inequities in Aotearoa New Zealand meant that we couldn’t just copy the letters used in the UK and Australia, and take a quick detour into the replication crisis. You’ll hear from Michael Hallsworth, who led the work in the UK, Janice Wilson, the CEO of the HQSC, Rawiri Jansen, a GP and member of the project's working group, and Nathan Chapell, who developed the letters we used in the project. 

Further reading

If you would like to read more about health inequities in New Zealand, you can read the paper mentioned by Rawiri Jansen here, as well as its follow up here. You can also read about the follow up to the UK study here, and the follow up to the Australian study here. 

If you are interested in learning more about the replication crisis, we would recommend this article. And if you would like to learn more about issues related to generalising studies from one area to another, we recommend you read this. Chapter 5 of Behavioral Insights, which was co authored by Michael Hallsworth (along with Elspeth Kirkman) also gives an overview of the issues discussed. 

Thanks to the large team of people who were involved in the project, especially Janice Wilson, Catherine Gerard, Richard Hamblin, Carl Shuker, Janet Mackay, Rawiri McKree Jansen, Richard Medlicott, Aniva Lawrence, Sally Roberts, Jan White and Leanne Te Karu. 

Music by Rich O’Brien https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=e9e2193372664b6b

Production by Alex Gyani. 

Editing by Pixelife Studios. 

In this latest episode of Inside The Nudge Unit BIT’s Aisling Colclough and Lis Costa look at two more major areas of work by the team around the world. First they are joined by colleagues Dr Vera Newman and Monica Wills Silva to explore BIT projects in Australia and Latin America looking at the role behavioural insights can play in helping reduce sexual harassment and violence against women on university campuses and in the home.

Secondly Nida Broughton and Ravi Dutta-Powell join Lis and Aisling to discuss their recent thought leadership work on how applying a behavioural and experimental lens to economic policy-making can bring substantial benefits to all.

The 2019 report referred to by Monica on applying behavioral insights to Intimate Partner Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is available here: https://www.bi.team/publications/applying-behavioral-insights-to-intimate-partner-violence/

You can find out more about the work discussed in Australia on encouraging bystanders to sexual harassment to take action here: https://www.bi.team/blogs/how-to-stop-sexual-harassment-as-a-bystander/

BIT has also been doing some similar work in Bangladesh on reducing sexual harassment on public transport which you can read about here: https://www.bi.team/blogs/nudging-bystanders-to-fight-sexual-harassment-isnt-easy-but-could-make-perpetrators-think-twice/ and download the full report here: https://www.bi.team/publications/nudging-bystanders-to-combat-sexual-harassment-in-bangladesh/

The two reports discussed by Nida and Ravi are available here:

The Behavioural Economy - 10 evidenced-based strategies for policymakers, regulators and researchers: https://www.bi.team/publications/the-behavioural-economy/

Making Markets Better - A policy manifesto for Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia: https://www.bi.team/publications/marking-markets-better/

Credits:

Production and editing by Andy Hetherington

Music by Rich O’Brien

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1m3zn3SHmMh3vuR13hkLCP?si=88ed700f455c4dc4