The BWA behaviour change database: May 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 papers that we added this month:

RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence from Two Nudge Units

Nudge interventions { behaviorally-motivated design changes with no financial incentives { have quickly expanded from academic studies to larger implementations in so-called Nudge Units in governments. This provides a unique opportunity to compare interventions in research studies, versus at scale. In this paper, we assemble a unique data set including all trials run by two of the largest Nudge Units in the United States, including 126 RCTs covering over 23 million individuals. We compare these trials to a separate sample of nudge trials published in academic journals from two recent meta-analyses. In papers published in academic journals, the average impact of a nudge is very large { an 8.7 percentage point take-up increase over the control. In the Nudge Unit trials, the average impact is still sizable and highly statistically significant, but smaller at 1.4 percentage points. We show that a large share of the gap is accounted for by publication bias, exacerbated by low statistical power, in the sample of published papers; in contrast, the Nudge Unit studies are well-powered, a hallmark of \at scale" interventions. Accounting for publication bias, and some differences in characteristics, reconciles the two estimates. We also compare these results to the predictions of academics and practitioners. Most forecasters overestimate the impact for the Nudge Unit interventions, though nudge practitioners are almost perfectly calibrated.

The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic

With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening millions of lives, changing our behaviors to prevent the spread of the disease is a moral imperative. Here, we investigated the persuasiveness of messages inspired by three major moral traditions. A sample of US participants representative for age, sex and race/ethnicity (N=1032) viewed messages from either a leader or citizen containing deontological, virtue-based, utilitarian, or non-moral justifications for adopting social distancing behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measured the messages’ effects on participants’ self-reported intentions to wash hands, avoid social gatherings, self-isolate, and share health messages, as well as their beliefs about others’ intentions, impressions of the messenger’s morality and trustworthiness, and beliefs about personal control and responsibility for preventing the spread of disease. Consistent with our pre-registered predictions, compared to non-moral control messages, deontological arguments had a modest effect on intentions to share the message. Message source (leader vs. citizen) did not moderate any of the observed effects of message type. A majority of participants predicted the utilitarian message would be most effective, but we found no evidence that the utilitarian message was effective in changing intentions or beliefs. We caution that our findings require confirmation in replication studies and are modest in size, likely due to ceiling effects on our measures of behavioral intentions and strong heterogeneity across all dependent measures along several demographic dimensions including age, self-identified gender, self-identified race, political conservatism, and religiosity. Although we found no evidence that the utilitarian message was effective in changing intentions and beliefs, exploratory analyses showed that individual differences in one key dimension of utilitarianism—impartial concern for the greater good—were strongly and positively associated with public health intentions and beliefs. Overall, our preliminary results suggest that public health messaging focused on duties and responsibilities toward family, friends and fellow citizens is a promising approach for future studies of interventions to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Ongoing work is investigating the reproducibility and generalizability of our findings across different populations, what aspects of deontological messages may drive their persuasive effects, and how such messages can be most effectively delivered across global populations.

Color and psychological functioning: a review of theoretical and empirical work

In the past decade there has been increased interest in research on color and psychological functioning. Important advances have been made in theoretical work and empirical work, but there are also important weaknesses in both areas that must be addressed for the literature to continue to develop apace. In this article, I provide brief theoretical and empirical reviews of research in this area, in each instance beginning with a historical background and recent advancements, and proceeding to an evaluation focused on weaknesses that provide guidelines for future research. I conclude by reiterating that the literature on color and psychological functioning is at a nascent stage of development, and by recommending patience and prudence regarding conclusions about theory, findings, and real-world application.

The Effects of the Facial Expression of Beneficiaries in Charity Appeals and Psychological Involvement on Donation Intentions

To increase the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns, many human‐need charities include pictures of beneficiaries in their ads. However, it is unclear when and why the facial expression of these beneficiaries (sad versus happy) may influence the effectiveness of charity ads. To answer these questions, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the facial expression on donation intentions, while considering the moderating role of psychological involvement with charities. It found that psychological involvement with charities moderated the impact of the facial expression on donation intentions in that seeing a picture of a sad versus happy person increased intentions to give among participants with lower levels of psychological involvement, whereas the reverse was true for highly involved participants. The moderating effect of psychological involvement was fully explained by the perceived efficacy of one's donation. The findings not only contribute to our understanding of the effect of the facial expression of people pictured in charity appeals on donation behavior, but also suggest that nonprofits should tailor their ads to target potential donors with various levels of psychological involvement with charities.

A large-scale field experiment shows giving advice improves academic outcomes for the advisor

Common sense suggests that people struggling to achieve their goals benefit from receiving motivational advice. What if the reverse is true? In a preregistered field experiment, we tested whether giving motivational advice raises academic achievement for the advisor. We randomly assigned n = 1,982 high school students to a treatment condition, in which they gave motivational advice (e.g., how to stop procrastinating) to younger students, or to a control condition. Advice givers earned higher report card grades in both math and a self-selected target class over an academic quarter. This psychologically wise advice-giving nudge, which has relevance for policy and practice, suggests a valuable approach to improving achievement: one that puts people in a position to give.

What we can learn from five naturalistic field experiments that failed to shift commuter behaviour

Across five field experiments with employees of a large organization (n = 68,915), we examined whether standard behavioural interventions (‘nudges’) successfully reduced single-occupancy vehicle commutes. In Studies 1 and 2, we sent letters and emails with nudges designed to increase carpooling. These interventions failed to increase carpool sign-up or usage. In Studies 3a and 4, we examined the efficacy of other well-established behavioural interventions: non-cash incentives and personalized travel plans. Again, we found no positive effect of these interventions. Across studies, effect sizes ranged from Cohen’s d = ?0.01 to d = 0.05. Equivalence testing, using study-specific smallest effect sizes of interest, revealed that the treatment effects observed in four out of five of our experiments were statistically equivalent to zero (P < 0.04). The failure of these well-powered experiments designed to nudge commuting behaviour highlights both the difficulty of changing commuter behaviour and the importance of publishing null results to build cumulative knowledge about how to encourage sustainable travel.

Prices, information and nudges for residential electricity conservation: A meta-analysis

Incentivising households to lower their electricity consumption is increasingly used as a tool to create a more flexible electricity demand. Previous reviews estimate that electricity savings of 6.4–7.4% can be achieved through monetary, informational and behavioural incentives. This papers argues that a more realistic estimate is of a 1.9–3.9% reduction in consumption based on the most recent experimental data, from both peer-reviewed and grey literature sources. Using data from 52 studies published during the “Smart Grid Era” (2005 onwards), the effects of incentives from 128 observations, amounting to 713,002 households, are analysed. The results show that individual and real-time feedback as well as personalised advice on how to save electricity are more effective than feedback on electricity costs and general electricity savings tips which lead to relative increases in consumption. Despite improvements in the quality of more recent studies, the analysis highlights the importance of methodological rigour in carrying out and reporting effects of incentives: an absence of a control group, of socio-demographic data, and the self-selection of participants into treatment leads to overestimation of effects.

Delegating decisions: Recruiting others to make choices we might regret

Consumers typically prefer freedom of choice, but when faced with a choice they might regret, they may prefer freedom from choice. Eight experiments show that people delegate difficult decisions, regardless of the decision's importance, and regardless of their potential surrogate's expertise. Delegation stems from a desire to avoid responsibility for potentially making the wrong choice rather than simply the desire to avoid the possibility of a poor outcome: although anticipated disappointment with the outcome and anticipated regret about one's decision both contribute to the decision to delegate, only anticipated regret directly leads people to delegate choices to others. Consequently, delegation is an appealing method for coping with difficult choices while allowing consumers to retain the benefits of choosing that they would forgo by opting out of the choice. Moreover, giving people the option to delegate makes them less prone to walk away from difficult choices empty-handed.

To access the database of over 5,000 behaviour change publications, please use this link. Please note that the database was last updated in April and will next be updated in June.

For further information about BehaviourWorks please email: [email protected]