Stage 2 of Designing an Air Travel Intervention: Identifying the Options — Applied Projects 2021
Following the success of our COM-B data collection process, the Behavioural Innovations Society team, working to design an intervention for UCL’s Psychology and Language Sciences department, have now moved on to Stage 2 of the design process:
2. Identify the intervention options
In order to understand how best to use the COM-B data, the team met with Dr Jo Hale of the PALS department. With her expertise as a researcher and consultant within the sustainable intervention industry, Dr Hale’s ideas and thoughts on our findings were invaluable. In particular, we took from the meeting a newfound excitement for the project, as well as practical advice for how to professionally and creatively approach the next stages of development.
In particular, we needed additional information to determine the possibilities and restrictions of our intervention. This required meetings with key stakeholders, including John Draper (Head of PALS Administration and the Green Impact Team), Gill Peacock (PALS Finance & Research Manager) and Danielle Watson (UCL Change Manager). From these meetings, we were able to get a broader understanding of how the intervention will fit within the department. We also understood how it would align alongside plans for funding sustainable travel, dashboards of sustainable activity and changes to the travel provider.
With this deeper awareness of the needs and limitations of our intervention, we set about identifying our options. Having been inspired by the work of another Applied Projects Team, we decided to develop some preliminary personas from our COM-B data. Personas offer a way to conceptualise the intervention user and ensure the design process is mindful of their needs and experiences throughout. To develop relevant personas for our project, we researched the literature on existing sustainable personas and the process for creating accurate and useful personas. After identifying 4 potentially relevant personas from the literature, we looked back at our data to see whether these would fit our intervention. From this process, we decided upon the following 3 personas:
The Sustainable Traveller
- The Sustainable Traveller ensures low CO2 travel is prioritised.
- Qualitative findings identify 1 out of 12 fits this category.
- Quantitative findings show that this persona is typically limited to the IT and Admin groups (6 people) who are both aware of the sustainability policies and take the most sustainable travel. The quantitative data also finds none of the respondents feel pressure to choose the most sustainable option, suggesting that they are internally motivated to do so.
- Like ‘Progressive Activists’ they could be utilised as social role models within the community and set an example that changes the travel behaviour of others.
The Transitional Sustainable Traveller
- The Transitional Sustainable Traveller tends to seek the most convenient option.
- They are aware of sustainability issues (supported by qualitative data), but there appears to be an intention-behaviour gap. They could be categorised as ‘Established Liberals’ due to this passivity.
- Literature finds that appealing to this person’s rationality and desire for convenience is most likely to see behaviour change. This could be achieved through rewards.
The Budget Traveller
- The Budget Traveller lacks the physical opportunity to choose train travel.
- The qualitative data finds 2 associate lecturers were explicitly concerned with budgeting their funding, which may not allow for train travel.
- We fact-checked this and found there is a difference of about £100 between air and train travel to European destination.
- Changing this behaviour could come from a change in PALS funding or as a spill-over from changing motivations towards budget allocation with a more sustainable focus.
These personas allowed us to start brainstorming our intervention with an awareness of PALS staff needs and the barriers and facilitators of train travel. To do this, we used LucidChart to map the personas and our initial intervention ideas:
Having identified different areas for the intervention options, structured around the 3 personas, we will now go further into this development stage and apply the relevant Behaviour Change Techniques. This will allow us to see which intervention ideas are possible and how they are likely to change the target behaviour. This will move us into the next stage of our design journey:
3. Identify the content and implementation options
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