The need to explore Behavioural Insights further in India

Nudge, as a concept was introduced by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book ‘Nudge: Improving Health, Wealth and Happiness’ in 2008. The define nudge as, "..any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid.

Nudge Theory sticks to me as I continue to chalk out the numerous implications for its use in the Indian context. I argue that Libertarian Paternalism may be a more socially, politically and personally acceptable concept in India (I will explain why) than in countries like the USA and the UK where government interventions, unobtrusive or visible, are met with skepticism. Because of the wide acceptance of a paternalist government or authority, improving the efficacy of several policies in India including, road safety, school meals, electricity consumption among others could be looked at from a behavioural lens. Effective communication using creative approaches, using social media for messaging and evidence based interventions can make public policy truly personal for the public.

The Obama Administration established the ‘nudge unit’ known as the Social and Behavioural Sciences Team to improve the implementation and effectiveness of federal programs and operations. The idea adopted by the administration in 2014, draws knowledge from psychology, behavioural economics and other decision sciences, seeking to alter human behaviour for the better, sometimes without them realising the change. Since then, nudge units have expanded globally and produced effective empirical experiments in various public and private sectors.

The idea behind a nudge goes beyond party politics and is directed towards improving policy implementation, providing a behavioural lens for policymaking. Governments increasingly find it difficult to address common civic challenges on their own, making them dependent on citizen participation eventually. Money spent and regulations passed, many policies remain on paper, unable to tackle the problem it was meant to resolve. A key issue today is the lack of research and public consultation in the policy process. Excessive legislations, regulations and government spending are proving to be ineffective to bring change to the physical and emotional environment in public spaces. Several civic issues emerge and sustain as a consequence of ineffective, often hard policies, weak policy implementation, failing to address the fundamental issue which is bounded rationality.?Mindless government spending and myopic incentives, yet, the quality of life remains unchanged without any motivation for improvement. This is where nudging and smart, visual, accessible and feasible communication using behaviour insights can be an interesting case study for government bodies in India.?

Behavioural economists believe that stronger policy can be developed by understanding how peoples biases affect action and behaviour. Governments who draw on behavioural economics can adopt a realistic view of human behaviour (The Decision Lab).

Classical economics uses the term ‘Econs’ to describe a rational human, working in his best interest in every situation, unbothered by influences of heuristics, personal biases and media influences. Behavioural economists, however, argue that humans do not always take rational decisions that serve their best interest, often making wrong choices without deliberating and processing all information. Positive and smart government messaging can bring great changes. We now look at government messaging mostly through an electoral lens alone. In order to execute an implementation strategy, nudges can be applied in several spheres, transforming public spaces in our cities and towns.

Governments must attempt to find ways of involving citizens in the policy process. Braybrooke and Lindblom (1963) argue that governments can become more intelligent if it is guided by responding to information, from the citizens. John (2011) suggests that for governments to remain competitive in a challenging era, they need to use smart and nimble instruments, guided by how citizens behave and driven by citizen participation. Citizens in representative democracies like India, USA, UK, New Zealand among others, elect governments to carry on the task of good governance, the media and public opinion keeping governments under check, and the threat of re-election forcing governments to act effectively. If citizens find a government to be ineffective, they can vote them out and elect a different party. Therefore, the role of local administrators, the bureaucracy, citizen groups including the press become important to administer public services in the most efficient and cost effective way.

Small behavioural changes through subtle nudges can have a large and unexpected, perhaps long term, positive changes on civic behaviour. The aim of governments should be to use smart and effective communication strategies, involving citizens in the process.?

Policies of Libertarian Paternalism, as Thaler and Sunstein mention in their book, is neither Liberal or Conservative, left or right.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party and Barrack Obama, a Democrat, have implemented several such policies guided by the principles of behavioural economics. Libertarian Paternalism can encourage bipartisan policymaking and implementation in domains such as environmental protection, safer roads, tax returns, inclusive public spaces among others. However, as the?'paternalistic’ choice architect, governments are expected to act as responsible actors, knowing what is good for its citizens thereby gaining legitimacy to intervene in different public arenas to improve the quality of services. This does not mean the elimination of any prior choice. Still Libertarian, citizen are free to choose whatever they wish, whether it is smoking, public urination, spitting, unsafe road crossing- they can still do all of that, but as the paternal actor, the government will steer citizen behaviour?towards a safer, economically sound and healthier lifestyle, through design interventions, visually appealing campaigns and rearranging the choice architecture.?

Legitimate questions have been raised on Libertarian Paternalism by researchers, classical economists and governments. Hard policies are usually visible and explicit. Nudge, as written in the book Nudge Nudge, Think Think by Peter John mentions the tenor of nudging as ‘we the government know better what is good for you than you do and we have found a sneaky way of you to make the right choice’. It sounds fair if the government is transparent, libertarian and responsive. Behaviour change, a sensitive topic would require public participation and support so governments would be expected to maintain high levels of transparency. A nudge can be perceived as authoritarian if they are not introduced to citizens in a transparent and sensitive way.

To assume that governments would always want the best for its citizens is an arguable case. Governments may find it hard to unpick different parts of a policy problem, governments might lack proper evidence to guide its decisions. Governments might only know the right nudges in a limited number of areas where there is plenty of evidence (Prabhakar, 2010). Government decisions are often guided by the election cycle- one poll today, another tomorrow affecting resource allocation, policy formation and implementation. ?

Interventions have to be made locally, from constituency levels, attempting to build a community and engage citizens, in a safer and healthier way in their shared public spaces. The complexity of India’s society will require personalised interventions which will vary from place to place. In modern democracies, it is hard to expect citizens to oblige to messages from a strong central authority. Social normative messaging in the Indian context has strong potential to drive change locally among communities. India, where a sense of community feeling is strong and where citizens look up to governments to be a paternalistic problem solvers will complement behavioural research.

An experiment conducted by the Behavioural Insights Team (2013) looked at the area of Legacy Giving, analysing whether social normative messaging increases donations to a charity or cause. There were two treatment groups with over 1,000 individuals in each. The treatments were as follows:

(1) The will-writers asked “Would you like to leave any money to charity in your will?” [Plain ask]

(2) The will-writers asked “Many of our customers like to leave money to charity in their will. Are there any causes you’re passionate about?” [Social Norm]

The results showed 10.8% of customers in the ‘plain ask’ group included a donation and 15.4% in the ‘social norm’ group. This compares to 4.9% in the baseline which was a period before the trial began (BIT, 2013)

The availability of, or the possibilities to acquire data from citizens is vast in India. With the wave of social media consumption, there is tremendous opportunity for governments to highlight key points of importance, and make it interesting for the user to consume them. That means, conducting field trials is feasible. Moreover, India’s strong decentralisation of civic power is a boon for behavioural economics study, allowing researchers and practitioners to work locally and at grassroots levels.

This is a win-win situation for all stakeholders. The government will benefit from its communication oriented and well researched, economically feasible behavioural interventions.?Citizens feel more in control of their public spaces. Regular feedback mechanisms in several interventions have proved to be effective riders of engagement. Citizens will win turn benefit from a better, healthier and wealthier lifestyle.

The MINDSPACE report was published on March 2, 2010, by the Institute for Government and the Cabinet Office, UK. Publication of the comprehensive report resulted in the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team and popularized the framework of nine robust, non-coercive influences on behaviour (The Decision Lab). MINDSPACE focuses on nine forces of influence that drive behaviour in a given context. Supported by field and lab experiments, the nine effects are thought to have the most significant influence on the automatic thinking.

MINDSPACE stands for - Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect,?Commitments, and Ego.

Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) is considered the gold?standard of testing the effects of an intervention. The trials are convincing as they offers counterfactual information of what would happen without the intervention. These trials are often conducted in the medical field to test the impact of drugs. Treatment groups and control groups provide accurate results of an intervention conducted during a particular time.?

Strong evidence based research and experiments with assistance from local authorities, media and citizens there is an opportunity to transform several policy areas.?

My key area of focus would be using principles of nudge and design interventions to improve the public space experience. Indian metros require a robust streetscape design manual, similar to cities like London. Cost effective measures can possibly have long term behavioural changes towards the public space. The guide provides cues to target human heuristics, targeting the ‘System 1’, or our natural, quick and often miscalculated decision making habit. The designs, well researched, will explain why specific design nudges could work. For instance, humans are more receptive to edges and squares having specific points. Have you wondered why we tend to step on the centre of floor tiles, avoiding the edges? It is simply because we create a mental boundary, our instincts informing us to not cross the boundary. Pedestrian crossings in the UK use an effective design intervention based on these mental boundaries, requiring pedestrian crossings to be marked by small square boundary around the edge. This simple intervention, nudging pedestrians to cross within the boundary has effective results, despite being a highly cost effective measure. Similarly, dynamic pedestrian crossings involving artist groups and targeting specific campaigns can evoke a sense of politico-cultural belonging and identification.?

World Resources Initiative launched the Vision Zero plan in Indian cities with an aim to “..initiate systematic road design changes, building infrastructure that is safe for all users and formulating laws and other measures to ensure safe mobility.” However, the interventions are based on architectural and somewhat hard policy interventions, skimming over the human behavioural aspect of interactions in public spaces. Using principles of tactical urbanism, organisations in Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi have attempted to reorganise haphazard public spaces, making a one time change to the built environment.

Pune’s administration launched the ‘Walking Happiness Index’ to measure scores given by pedestrians to 8 streets in Pune. The interventions beautifully transform existing physical spaces to make them pedestrian-friendly. According to Pune’s mayor, the annual celebration of ‘Pedestrian Day’ will be instrumental in transforming streets. Though the intervention in the physical space is good, citizens will require additional nudging to behave safely in public spaces.

There is a greater need to look into irrational human behaviour that leads people to make unsafe and unhealthy choices. Roads and streets are one of many possible areas that could benefit from nudging, social messaging and citizen involvement to solve basic civic issues. Therefore, where citizen’s trust the government or if governments can get its citizens to trust them, the possibility to implement nudges to solve complex problems will have scope.

Behavioural insights are not an alternative to traditional policy making, but complements the process, adding influential insights about behavioural science. There are promising possibilities for governments to use behavioural insights about its citizen, understanding the influences of biases and heuristics influences human decision, complementing the existing policy making process.?