This report (House of Lords (2011). Behaviour Change. 2nd Report of Session 2010–12, House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee, HL Paper 179) presents the findings of the House of Lords' Science and Technology Committee investigation into behaviour change. It examines the effectiveness of current UK government approaches to achieving public changes in behaviour across a range of areas (from smoking cessation to energy efficiency) but focuses in particular on government’s approaches to addressing obesity and and reducing private car use.
The report concludes, in fairly robust terms, that voluntary measures of the kind favoured by Government (‘nudge’ approaches) are insufficient in themselves, and that a range of mechanisms including fiscal measures and regulation is likely to be needed if changes in behaviour are to be achieved.
The summary is as follows:
We heard evidence that, although much was understood about human behaviour from basic research, there was relatively little evidence about how this understanding could be applied in practice to change the behaviour of populations… We make some recommendations to address this issue.
Although we acknowledge that further applied research at a population level is needed, we also found that the available evidence supports a number of conclusions. Our central finding is that non-regulatory measures used in isolation, including “nudges”, are less likely to be effective. Effective policies often use a range of interventions.
We concluded that it is important to consider the whole range of possible interventions when policy interventions are designed. We place particular emphasis on this conclusion because the evidence we received indicated that the Government’s preference for non-regulatory interventions has encouraged officials to exclude consideration of regulatory measures when thinking about behaviour change. Though there is a lack of applied research on changing behaviour at a population level, there is other available evidence that the Government need to use to better effect. We were therefore disappointed to find that, although we received some examples of evidence-based policies, such as policies on energy-efficient products and smoking cessation services, we were also given many examples of policies that had not taken account of available evidence, including policies on food labelling and alcohol pricing.
We also found that a lot more could, and should, be done to improve the evaluation of interventions. This is not only good practice but would help to build a body of research that could inform effective policies targeting population-level behaviour change.
The report presents this useful table listing the kinds of interventions that are possible, with examples.
In more detail the report’s conclusions and recommendations are as follows:
“In general, the evidence supports the conclusion that non-regulatory or regulatory measures used in isolation are often not likely to be effective and that usually the most effective means of changing behaviour at a population level is to use a range of policy tools, both regulatory and non-regulatory. Given that many factors may influence behaviour, this conclusion is perhaps unsurprising. We are concerned, however, that emphasising non-regulatory interventions will lead to policy decisions where the evidence for the effectiveness of other interventions in changing behaviour has not been considered. This would jeopardise the development of evidence-based, effective and cost-effective policies.”
The report recommends that Government should appoint an independent Chief Social Scientist to provide them with robust and independent scientific advice
On voluntary agreements and collaboration it says this: “The involvement of other organisations to support the Government’s behaviour change initiatives may provide valuable opportunities to improve the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions, in particular by allowing a range of messengers to be used to deliver them. However, we have major doubts about the effectiveness of voluntary agreements with commercial organisations, in particular where there are potential conflicts of interest” - and here the report says, in relation to obesity, one of its case study subjects – “Current voluntary agreements with businesses in relation to public health have major failings. They are not a proportionate response to the scale of the problem of obesity and do not reflect the evidence about what will work to reduce obesity. If effective agreements cannot be reached, or if they show minimal benefit, the Government should pursue regulation.” The report argues that the government’s current approach to “food labelling and marketing of unhealthy products to children is not in accordance with the available evidence about changing behaviour.”
And it says that “Where voluntary agreements are made, we recommend that the following principles should be applied in order to ensure that they achieve their purpose:
- The Government should specify clearly what they want businesses to do based on the evidence about how to change behaviour, and what steps they will take to achieve the same result if voluntary agreements are not forthcoming, or prove ineffective.
- Voluntary agreements should be rigorously and independently evaluated against measurable and time-limited outcomes”
The report also argues that Government must invest in gathering more evidence about what measures work to influence population behaviour change.
You can download the report here.
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