The Behaviour Change Hierarchy, published by the CIWM Behaviour Change Strategic Expert Group and The Mobius Agency, examines the impact of different interventions on behaviour change.
You can read the CIWM Report: The Behaviour Change Hierarchy now.
The Behaviour Change Hierarchy has been 30 years in the making. It is a concept drawn from real-world, front-line experience of developing communications to support new waste and recycling services and waste sector reforms around the world.
The aim of the Behaviour Change Hierarchy is to help those planning services and/or other interventions to think about the likely impact of their design in terms of achieving behaviour change.
It has emerged from the field of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) where, since the early 2000s, there has been a need to move towards circular economies requiring large-scale behaviour change at local and national levels.
However, the principles set out here can be applied to other scenarios and other sectors that seek to change behaviours including wider environmental issues, transport, energy and healthcare.
Why do we need the Behaviour Change Hierarchy?
In waste management, the term “behaviour change” has become synonymous with communication to the point where the two are often seen as one and the same.
Whilst communicating is a critical component of services and interventions, particularly where circular economy principles are being adopted, it rarely results in behaviour change when deployed in isolation.
It is appropriate to consider behaviour change as a key operational objective; increasing recycling, minimising waste, and reducing the use of single-use plastic – all are examples of the need to change behaviour through a combination of policy, services and communications.
Service and intervention design are influenced by a great many factors, with near-infinite options of permutation.
This often leads to designing waste and recycling services that suit the technical and operational needs of the implementing institution relying on communications to encourage active participation (or acceptance) amongst users.
However, because operational requirements do not always consider the service-user experience, the level of communication required to achieve behaviour change at scale can be unaffordable and can lead to services under-performing.
What is the Behaviour Change Hierarchy?
The Behaviour Change Hierarchy examines the primary strategic options in terms of service design.
It’s intended to help inform the choices made by policy and decision-makers in determining the most appropriate approach to achieve the desired outcome, visualising the required level of communication needed to support a specific strategic choice.
It places the strategic options in order of descending effectiveness in stimulating a change. The further down this list you go, the greater the need for (and thus investment in) communication is required to compensate for the reduction in effectiveness of each.
Applying this model to operational planning will help you to consider whether your operational choices will be sufficiently supported by the required level of communication.
An on-going project
The Behaviour Change Hierarchy was conceptualised and lead-authored by behaviour change communications expert Stephen Bates, with assistance from Wasteaware’s Andrew Whiteman, and published by The Mobius Agency and CIWM Behaviour Change Strategic Expert Group.
The Hierarchy is open-source and anyone is welcome and encouraged to reference any part of it in their reports, articles and presentations.
When doing so please use the reference: ‘The Behaviour Change Hierarchy, Stephen Bates and CIWM 2024’. Note that this applies only to text and diagrams. Photographs must not be copied.
The Behaviour Change Hierarchy is a working hypothesis and the author welcomes opinions, suggestions and commentary. You can be contact him at stephen@mobiusagency.org.uk.
