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Alternatives to the pulpit

Politicians have always tried to influence our choices – and this week they are at it again.

There are many more ways to change citizen behaviour than legislation and moral exhortation.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan-Smith has urged the wealthy to hand back their benefits. Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, meanwhile, has re-opened the low pay debate, urging firms to pay staff the ‘living wage’ and suggesting Labour might legislate to end ‘zero hours contracts’, which force employees to be available for work but don’t guarantee any set hours of employment.

Both politicians are arguably speaking out because they have been frustrated in their desires to achieve change through legislation. David Cameron limited Duncan-Smith’s room for manoeuvre by pledging in the election campaign to protect pensioner benefits. Andy Burnham, meanwhile, lacks the necessary power to change wage rules now – and, if returned to office, might lack the appetite to impose a regional minimum wage. The idea that a government with little money and no appetite to regulate or tax has to fall back on appeals to a higher morality to change behaviour ignores a set of potentially effective tools, as we have argued before.

Small, simple administrative changes can have big effects. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has proven, for example, that changes to the wording of tax letters can have a dramatic impact on payment rates; the Courts Service has found that just texting offenders can increase payment of fines. Local authorities, meanwhile, have spent the last decade learning that changes in urban design can have a major impact on crime levels.

In our MINDSPACE report on behaviour change, we highlighted nine factors that affect our decision-making:

  1. Messenger: We are heavily influenced by who communicates information.
  2. Incentives: our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly avoiding losses.
  3. Norms: we are strongly influenced by what others do.
  4. Defaults: we “go with the flow‟ of pre-set options.
  5. Salience: our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us.
  6. Priming: our acts are often influenced by sub-conscious cues.
  7. Affect: our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions.
  8. Commitments: we seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate acts.
  9. Ego: we act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves.

Applying these ideas quickly highlights a number of interesting avenues for those seeking to reduce benefits take-up by the wealthy or to increase wage levels. Might we, for example, establish a norm that it’s unacceptable to take benefits you don’t need – perhaps by praising those who already refuse these benefits or offering an option to redirect benefits to charity (HMRC used to offer this for those owed tax refunds)? Might we make it a default for all older age benefits that citizens must ‘opt in’ in order to receive them? Should annual reports ask companies to disclose whether or not they pay the living wage or are ‘no zero-hour contract’ employers – enabling NGOs to compile a ‘good employer’ list? Of course, these are hastily conceived ideas.

But fortunately, unlike national legislation or proclamation, these and other behaviour change interventions can be rigorously tested before they are inflicted on the population at large – and the Behavioural Insights Team has led the charge in government to use randomised control trials. We can learn what works, where and why, while also testing public appetite for such changes, to ensure their acceptability. All this is good news for Iain Duncan-Smith and Andy Burnham. They, and others who lack legislative power, may have many more ways of achieving the changes they desire than they think. Of course, as they contemplate and test the new tools in their arsenal, ministers and officials will also have to ask themselves a tricky question. Are they the ‘messengers’ who are best placed to inspire us to change the way we live our lives?

Publisher
Institute for Government

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