Founder of Hubbub and Sizzle Trewin Restorick explains five techniques his companies have used to drive sustainable changes in the public’s behaviour.
Encouraging people to change everyday habits to benefit the environment and wider society has been at the heart of my working life.
The challenge is complex and fraught with potential missteps. A delicate line is needed to avoid accusations that you represent the nanny state intent on restricting freedom of choice.
What I have learned is that there is a science behind behaviour change campaigns. Simply giving people information doesn’t work and can lead to the “value-action gap” where people know what they should do but don’t act on that knowledge.
Instead, behaviour change initiatives require a range of proven techniques, selecting those that are most appropriate and are backed with compelling communications.
Here are five examples of innovative behaviour change techniques:
The Nudge technique
Nudging is a simple technique designed to encourage people to change their behaviour at the point they are about to act or make a decision.
A frequently mentioned example is the etching of the image of a housefly into the men’s urinals at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport which sought to “improve the aim”.
At Hubbub, we used the nudge concept with ballot bins that featured funny or relevant questions to encourage people to vote with their cigarette butts rather than chuck them on the floor.
The beauty of the nudge technique is that it can be cheap and quick to implement. It provides a huge scope for playfulness and results are easy to track. The downside is that, unless implemented at a large scale, it doesn’t win hearts and minds.
The person using the voting bin at one location might resort to dropping their cigarette butt on the floor when walking past a different bin if there is no prompt to act differently.
The social norms technique
For complex issues, such as climate change, which require a range of inter-connected changes of habit, more sophisticated approaches are required.
Research has shown that people are more likely to change their habits if they see their friends, peers, colleagues and families following these behaviours. These habits then become the social norm and therefore acceptable.
Shifting social norms requires authentic and respected leaders who can persuade others of the desirability or appropriateness of certain actions. Disseminating these actions will help obtain broad acceptance amongst the general public and eventually start being taken for granted and internalised.
Many organisations seek to shift social norms through the creation of “green teams”. While theoretically a strong approach, I have seen many instances where this hasn’t worked for two reasons.
Firstly, it is incredibly difficult to find leaders who are genuinely respected and influential as the catalysts for change. Too often a green team can consist of “the usual suspects” and quickly become marginalised.
Secondly, organisations need to ensure that they are clear on the scope of the green team. Frequently these teams can become demoralised if they try to drive through a shift in habits only to hit organisational blocks.
Choice editing and incentives
Sometimes the easiest ways to change behaviour are either to take away choice or to provide incentives leading to a long-term change of habits.
Choice editing is most frequently driven by changes in legislation, but it can be at the discretion of a company or a group of companies. However, this can be controversial and lead to questions such as who makes the decision and based on what evidence.
Incentives are a less controversial route. At Hubbub, we partnered with Starbucks to introduce a 5p charge on disposable cups which immediately almost doubled the take-up of reusables and generated income for a wide range of sustainability initiatives.
There is significant scope for this type of incentive scheme and I am surprised that more aren’t being created.
Fun theory and visualisation
Several organisations have tried playful techniques to change behaviour. One initiative transformed a plain staircase into a piano which made using the stairs more fun. As a result, 66% of people were persuaded to use the stairs rather than the escalator.
At Hubbub, we experimented with fun theory with a talking bin which commented every time it was used by people.
Although massively successful on social media, it wasn’t a long-term success as the delicate electronics were repeatedly damaged when the bin was emptied and led to the bin randomly wolf-whistling at passers-by.
Installations demonstrating the cumulative impact of many small actions have been more effective. Visual displays are a great way for people to see how a daily routine can have a wider impact.
At Hubbub, the most successful example of this approach was a litter shop in the Forest of Dean that displayed all the litter that had been collected from the forest in a day. People were shocked to see that packaging dropped over 20 years previously was still lying on the ground.
Systemic change
The above approaches can prove highly effective but are only likely to reach some people, some of the time.
If we are to truly shift to a more sustainable society, we need to drive systemic change and make it easy for people to do the right thing by offering them products and services that are readily available, effective and affordable.
This change requires radical collaboration across all sectors and is time-consuming and complex. With my new organisation Sizzle, I have started to explore how to deliver this deep-level change starting with the horticulture sector.
This work involves building a partnership of organisations willing to work together seeking to change legislation, educate citizens and create new products.
The experiment is being independently evaluated and lessons will be openly shared. To keep up to date with our findings please subscribe to our free monthly bulletin.
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