The BWA behaviour change database: February 2020 update

BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) researchers at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI) have spent several years curating a database of over 5,000 behaviour change publications. This database is used to inform many of our research projects and is now available for others to use.

Here are some of the most interesting and useful papers added this month:

Civic honesty around the globe

Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. In these experiments, we turned in more than 17,000 lost wallets containing varying amounts of money at public and private institutions and measured whether recipients contacted the owners to return the wallets. In virtually all countries, citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Neither nonexperts nor professional economists were able to predict this result. Additional data suggest that our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, both of which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty.

The english plastic bag charge changed behavior and increased support for other charges to reduce plastic waste

Plastic bags create large amounts of waste and cause lasting environmental problems when inappropriately discarded. In 2015, England introduced a mandatory five pence (US$0.06/€0.06) charge to customers for each single-use plastic bag taken from large stores. Combining a longitudinal survey (n = 1,230), supermarket observations (n = 3,764), and a longitudinal interview study (n = 43), we investigated people's behavioral and attitudinal responses to the charge. We show that all age, gender, and income groups in England substantially reduced their plastic bag usage within 1 month after the charge was introduced, with interviewees highlighting the ease of bringing their own bags. Support for the bag charge also increased among all key demographic groups. Increased support for the plastic bag charge in turn predicted greater support for other charges to reduce plastic waste, suggesting a "policy spillover" effect. Results indicate a broad and positive effect of the bag charge, which appears to have catalyzed wider waste awareness among the British public. This may facilitate the introduction of other policies to eliminate avoidable single-use plastics and packaging.

Behavioral Economics and Energy Conservation – A Systematic Review of Non-price Interventions and Their Causal Effects

Research from economics and psychology suggests that behavioral interventions can be a powerful climate policy instrument. This paper provides a systematic review of the existing empirical evidence on non-price interventions targeting energy conservation behavior of private households. Specifically, we analyze four nudge-like interventions referred to as social comparison, commitment devices, goal setting, and labeling in 44 international studies comprising 105 treatments. This paper differs from previous systematic reviews by solely focusing on studies that permit the identification of causal effects. We find that all four interventions have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption of private households, yet effect sizes vary immensely. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of impact evaluations before rolling out behavioral policy interventions at scale.

Individual Differences in Loss Aversion: Conscientiousness Predicts How Life Satisfaction Responds to Losses Versus Gains in Income

Loss aversion is considered a general pervasive bias occurring regardless of the context or the person making the decision. We hypothesized that conscientiousness would predict an aversion to losses in the financial domain. We index loss aversion by the relative impact of income losses and gains on life satisfaction. In a representative German sample (N = 105,558; replicated in a British sample, N = 33,848), with conscientiousness measured at baseline, those high on conscientiousness have the strongest reactions to income losses, suggesting a pronounced loss aversion effect, whereas for those moderately unconscientious, there is no loss aversion effect. Our research (a) provides the first evidence of personality moderation of any loss aversion phenomena, (b) supports contextual perspectives that both personality and situational factors need to be examined in combination, (c) shows that the small but robust relationship between income and life satisfaction is driven primarily by a subset of people experiencing highly impactful losses.

A cautionary note about messages of hope: Focusing on progress in reducing carbon emissions weakens mitigation motivation

For the first time this millennium, growth in carbon emissions has slowed. Indeed, the year 2014 was the first time in 40 years that the planet saw zero growth in emissions. We examine whether this message of progress can be effective in motivating people to engage in mitigation efforts. This question dovetails with commentary suggesting that gloomy messages about climate change risk fatiguing the population, and that alternative approaches are necessary. It is also informed by work suggesting that hope is a motivating force in terms of engaging in collective action and social change. Study 1 (N = 574) showed that negative emotions were strongly related to mitigation motivation and feelings of efficacy, but hope-related emotions had a much weaker relationship with these constructs. In the main experiment (Study 2: N = 431) participants read an optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral message about the rate of progress in reducing global carbon emissions. Relative to the pessimistic message, the optimistic message reduced participants' sense that climate change represented a risk to them, and the associated feelings of distress. Consequently, the optimistic message was less successful in increasing mitigation motivation than the pessimistic message. In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy.

Nudging and Boosting: Steering or Empowering Good Decisions

In recent years, policy makers worldwide have begun to acknowledge the potential value of insights from psychology and behavioral economics into how people make decisions. These insights can inform the design of nonregulatory and nonmonetary policy interventions—as well as more traditional fiscal and coercive measures. To date, much of the discussion of behaviorally informed approaches has emphasized “nudges,” that is, interventions designed to steer people in a particular direction while preserving their freedom of choice. Yet behavioral science also provides support for a distinct kind of nonfiscal and noncoercive intervention, namely, “boosts.” The objective of boosts is to foster people’s competence to make their own choices—that is, to exercise their own agency. Building on this distinction, we further elaborate on how boosts are conceptually distinct from nudges: The two kinds of interventions differ with respect to (a) their immediate intervention targets, (b) their roots in different research programs, (c) the causal pathways through which they affect behavior, (d) their assumptions about human cognitive architecture, (e) the reversibility of their effects, (f) their programmatic ambitions, and (g) their normative implications. We discuss each of these dimensions, provide an initial taxonomy of boosts, and address some possible misconceptions.

Mapping the Landscape of Behavioral Theories: Systematic Literature Review

The term “behavioral” has become a hot topic in recent years in various disciplines; however, there is yet limited understanding of what theories can be considered behavioral theories and what fields of research they can be applied to. Through a cross-disciplinary literature review, this article identifies sixty-two behavioral theories from 963 search results, mapping them in a diagram of four groups (factors, strategies, learning and conditioning, and modeling), and points to five discussion points: understanding of terms, classification, guidance on the use of appropriate theories, inclusion in data-driven research and agent-based modeling, and dialogue between theory-driven and data-driven approaches.

Habit formation in children: Evidence from incentives for healthy eating

We present findings from a field experiment conducted at 40 elementary schools involving 8000 children and 400,000 child-day observations, which tested whether providing short-run incentives can create habit formation in children. Over a 3- or 5-week period, students received an incentive for eating a serving of fruits or vegetables during lunch. Relative to an average baseline rate of 39%, providing small incentives doubled the fraction of children eating at least one serving of fruits or vegetables. Two months after the end of the intervention, the consumption rate at schools remained 21% above baseline for the 3-week treatment and 44% above baseline for the 5-week treatment. These findings indicate that short-run incentives can produce changes in behavior that persist after incentives are removed.

Meta-analysis of pro-environmental behaviour spillover

When people engage in a first pro-environmental behaviour (PEB1; for example, conserving energy at home), are they more or less likely (positive and negative spillover, respectively) to engage in other pro-environmental behaviours (‘PEB2’; for example, conserving water at home)? We examined evidence for spillover using a meta-analysis of interventions. We coded 22 studies and unpublished data that fulfilled the following criteria: used experimental or quasi-experimental design, showed change in a PEB1 and measured at least one PEB2. Analysis of the 77 effect sizes found in these studies showed that the overall spillover from a PEB1 was positive, though small, on the intention to perform a PEB2 (pooled mean effect size estimate d+ = 0.17). However, the spillover effect was negative and small for actual behaviour (d+ = ?0.03) and policy support (d+ = ?0.01) for PEB2. Positive spillover was most likely when interventions targeted intrinsic motivation and when PEB1 and PEB2 were similar. Future research in the area should target and measure spillover processes, collect larger samples and statistically test for spillover in more consistent ways.

Avoiding the ask: A field experiment on altruism, empathy, and charitable giving

If people enjoy giving, then why do they avoid fund-raisers? Partnering with the Salvation Army at Christmastime, we conducted a randomized field experiment placing bell ringers at one or both main entrances to a supermarket, making it easy or difficult to avoid the ask. Additionally, bell ringers either were silent or said “please give.” Making avoidance difficult increased both the rate of giving and donations. Paradoxically, the verbal ask dramatically increased giving but also led to dramatic avoidance. We argue that this illustrates sophisticated awareness of the empathy-altruism link: people avoid empathic stimulation to regulate their giving and guilt.

Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving

Charity could do the most good if every dollar donated went to causes that produced the greatest welfare gains. In line with this proposition, the effective-altruism movement seeks to provide individuals with information regarding the effectiveness of charities in hopes that they will contribute to organizations that maximize the social return of their donation. In this research, we investigated the extent to which presenting effectiveness information leads people to choose more effective charities. We found that even when effectiveness information is made easily comparable across options, it has a limited impact on choice. Specifically, people frequently choose less effective charity options when those options represent more subjectively preferred causes. In contrast to making a personal donation decision, outcome metrics are used to a much greater extent when choosing financial investments and when allocating aid resources as an agent of an organization. Implications for effective altruism are discussed.

Information avoidance

We commonly think of information as a means to an end. However, a growing theoretical and experimental literature suggests that information may directly enter the agent's utility function. This can create an incentive to avoid information, even when it is useful, free, and independent of strategic considerations. We review research documenting the occurrence of information avoidance, as well as theoretical and empirical research on reasons why people avoid information, drawing from economics, psychology, and other disciplines. The review concludes with a discussion of some of the diverse (and often costly) individual and societal consequences of information avoidance. ( JEL D82, D83).

Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine. We argue that the lay public, and sometimes researchers, put too much trust in RCTs over other methods of investigation. Contrary to frequent claims in the applied literature, randomization does not equalize everything other than the treatment in the treatment and control groups, it does not automatically deliver a precise estimate of the average treatment effect (ATE), and it does not relieve us of the need to think about (observed or unobserved) covariates. Finding out whether an estimate was generated by chance is more difficult than commonly believed. At best, an RCT yields an unbiased estimate, but this property is of limited practical value. Even then, estimates apply only to the sample selected for the trial, often no more than a convenience sample, and justification is required to extend the results to other groups, including any population to which the trial sample belongs, or to any individual, including an individual in the trial. Demanding ‘external validity’ is unhelpful because it expects too much of an RCT while undervaluing its potential contribution. RCTs do indeed require minimal assumptions and can operate with little prior knowledge. This is an advantage when persuading distrustful audiences, but it is a disadvantage for cumulative scientific progress, where prior knowledge should be built upon, not discarded. RCTs can play a role in building scientific knowledge and useful predictions but they can only do so as part of a cumulative program, combining with other methods, including conceptual and theoretical development, to discover not ‘what works’ but ‘why things work’.

Effect of Different Financial Incentive Structures on Promoting Physical Activity Among Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance: Few adults engage in recommended levels of physical activity. Financial incentives can promote physical activity, but little is known about how the structure of these incentives influences their effectiveness (eg, how incentives are disbursed over time). […] During the intervention, compared with participants in the control group, participants receiving constant incentives logged 306.7 more steps per day (95% CI, 91.5-521.9 steps; P = .005), those receiving decreasing incentives logged 96.9 more steps per day (95% CI, 15.3-178.5 steps; P = .02), and those receiving increasing incentives logged no significant change in steps per day (1.5 steps per day; 95% CI, -81.6 to 84.7 steps; P = .97). One week after the intervention, compared with participants in the control group, only participants receiving constant incentives logged significantly more steps per day (329.5; 95% CI, 20.6-638.4; P = .04). Two and 3 weeks after the intervention, there were no significant differences compared with participants in the control group. Overall, for each $1 spent, participants in the constant incentives group logged 475.4 more steps than those in the increasing incentives group and 429.3 more steps than those in the decreasing incentives group. Conclusions and Relevance: This study found that financial incentives for physical activity were more effective during a payment period when they were offered at a constant rate rather than an increasing or decreasing rate. However, this effectiveness dissipated shortly after the incentives were removed.