Improving Public Policy through Behavioral Design
The international development sector spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to create programs that improve livelihoods around the world. Despite this investment, programs often fall short because they don’t respond to how humans actually behave. Fortunately, the growing field of behavioral science can help policymakers save money and make programs that make a difference.
Recently, the OECD, a 35-nation economic development organization, published Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World. The book provides case studies from a range of countries that demonstrate the application of behavioral science in public policy to transform systems, services and products. Here are three reasons to be excited by the potential of behavioral science in public policy.
Behavioral Science is Widely Applicable
While many discoveries in the world of behavioral science begin in psychology labs, they can be used in almost any field to inform the creation of new policy, or help address pain points in existing programming. Behavioral science has helped create solutions in city administration, healthcare, college access, and financial planning.
One case study from the OECD publication was the use of text messages to encourage low-literacy adults in the UK to enroll and remain in continuing education courses. The content of the text messages focused on social and organizational support as well as positive feedback. Continuing education enrollment of adults who received these behaviorally-informed messages increased by 7 percent and mid-term dropouts decreased by 36 percent compared to a control group.
GRID Impact is currently using behavioral science and human-centered design to address the justice gap in San Francisco. In-depth interviews with dozens of social services workers, legal aid lawyers and low-income Bay Area residents helped our team identify common, recurring issues in an overwhelmed legal system. With an understanding of the problem areas, our consultants designed behaviorally-informed prototypes that make it easier for caseworkers working on behalf of low-income San Franciscans to find legal advice for their clients and guide them towards appropriate action. These designs, developed using behavioral insights, will undergo a micro-trial this summer.
Behavioral Science Creates Tangible Improvements
In Germany, the arrangement of food in Air Force cafeterias was found to have a significant impact on the dietary choices. Healthy foods, which had previously been displayed in under-visited corners of the cafeteria, were placed at eye-level and easy to grab water bottles and fruit made the intervention a low-cost success story.
In the UK, several behavioral “nudges” were tested in online forms for the National Health Service (NHS) to increase organ donor registration. This inexpensive intervention allowed the NHS to test eight types of messaging to uncover the language most persuasive to new registrants. Researchers discovered that language emphasizing reciprocity (“If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so, help others.”) was most effective, leading to 96,000 new organ donor enrollments.
These and other examples from OECD’s book reaffirm the Executive Director of the Center for Economic Opportunity in New York City Matthew Klein’s statement that, “Behavioral science promises large-scale outcomes at a low cost — the holy grail of innovation.”
The Behavioral Science Approach to Change
Using behavioral science has little to do with changing individuals and much to do with changing the context around them.
Prior to founding GRID Impact, CEO Alexandra Fiorillo was part of a team of consultants for CGAP in Ghana who sought to understand why low-income account holders do not pursue complaints or recourse when they have a negative experience with their financial institution. Through behavioral field research, the team confirmed their early hypotheses: that low-income Ghanaians held common misconceptions and beliefs about banking that made them less likely to file a complaint. Our team uncovered several insights: consumers think that losing money is part of the normal experience in dealing with financial service providers; consumers often doubt that their complaints will be resolved in their favor; if they submit a complaint, they may have to follow up at a later time but then fail to do so; if consumers complain but their complaint is not immediately addressed, they may not escalate their complaint or otherwise persist in the complaints process due to their conception of banking as a personal relationship; and low-income consumers do not think that the Bank of Ghana accepts and handles consumer complaints. With an understanding of these mental models, our researchers made small contextual changes to the complaints process that made a previously intimidating and cumbersome system easier to navigate at every level.
This approach represents the great promise of behavioral research and design — the ability to understand individual and community needs and adapt crucial systems to respond to them, building trust amongst all actors.
Looking ahead
As dozens of case studies from OECD’s publication suggest, the use of behavioral science in developing public policy is already well underway. The challenge now is to make the benefits of behavioral science in public policy widely known and standard practice.
Later this month, GRID Impact is leading a three-day training in Nairobi, Kenya sponsored by CGAP at the World Bank and Innovations for Poverty Action, to introduce behavioral research and design to policymakers and financial inclusion experts. Together with the publication of OECD’s book, GRID Impact hopes that behavioral science insights will continue to inform and transform how public policy is created and implemented.
