Applying Behavioural Science to the Private Sector

Decoding What People Say and What They Do

Helena Rubinstein

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783030016975
• eBook ISBN: 9783030016982
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Psychology

This book demonstrates how applying behavioural science to commercial problems can effectively help businesses to understand and achieve the best outcomes for their customers. Bringing together theory and practice the author describes how approaches underpinning behavioural science can be adapted to the fast-moving environment of the private sector.

The first part of the book discusses the underlying theory and principles behind behavioural science. It outlines the history of the discipline, explaining how behavioural scientists use theories and models of behaviour, and discussing why behaviour is so hard to predict. It then describes how the theory can be applied to designing products, services and interventions. In Part II Rubinstein uses several key case studies to explore the challenges of integrating behavioural science into established practices, considering how to use behavioural science in multidisciplinary teams and why this might be useful. She addresses concerns about the ethics of using behavioural science in this context before describing the value of applying behavioural science to business and how best to realise its potential. This book is a must-read for both practitioners and academics interested in applying the science of behaviour to real-world challenges.

Part I

Theory and Principles of Behavioural Science

This section focuses on the theory of behavioural science and its relevance to commercial issues. It describes the basic principles and the main theories that underpin behavioural science.

The aim is to help readers to understand what behaviour is, how behavioural scientists describe and model behaviour, and how to use this knowledge to improve research, product and service development, and intervention design.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of behavioural science. It describes how the discipline of behavioural science developed from ideas emerging from social and health psychology, how these ideas challenged classical economic theory, and how they have been transferred, and successfully used by policy makers. It explores the main principles of nudge theory and suggests that there is more to behavioural science than ‘nudging’. The chapter concludes that businesses would benefit from applying the scientific method of behavioural science in the commercial sector, if they can overcome five major challenges to its implementation.

Chapter 2 focusses on the difficulty of predicting behaviour, explains the intention–behaviour gap, and explores why existing market research methods are not good enough at predicting behaviour. Conventional methods often fail to yield useful information because the data collected is often poor quality, data is confused with insight, the research fails to focus on the factors that drive behaviour, and the research is done to confirm existing biases rather than to prove or refute behavioural hypotheses. This chapter describes the barriers that prevent businesses developing a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour. It explains why businesses need better research tools and methods that apply the principles of behavioural science if they are to design products and services that are intuitive to use and that people want. It clarifies the need for a good theoretical framework to allow researchers to find out what people really do, not what they say they do.

Chapter 3 describes the science behind behaviour and why theories and models are useful. They provide focus, help to cut through complexity, and guide decisions about what products, services and interventions to design and develop. It argues that too many businesses focus on changing attitudes and beliefs rather than on the behaviours themselves. Without a good theory or model of behaviour, companies do not know what activities to observe, or what is really important in influencing behaviour. It discusses what makes a good theory or model of behaviour and how organisations can use and develop models to understand specific challenges. It illustrates how theories, such as the COM-B and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology Model, benefit decision-making and how they can be used in practice.

Chapter 4 explores the application of theory to intervention design and explains why a structured approach is vital. It outlines a five-step process that can be applied in business, starting with defining the desired behavioural outcome, taking the reader through approaches for doing a behavioural diagnostic, prioritising the influences on behaviour, identifying suitable behaviour-change techniques, ideating products, services and interventions and prioritising them, and ends with how to test and evaluate them. It describes how a structured approach helps to refine a large number of options down to a small number of intervention ideas that have a good probability of success. It concludes that using a systematic process, which is grounded in evidence and theory, results in solutions that are more likely to be effective and acceptable to the consumer.

© The Author(s) 2018

Helena RubinsteinApplying Behavioural Science to the Private Sectorhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01698-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. An Overview of Behavioural Science

Why Businesses Don’t Use It and Why They Should

Helena Rubinstein¹

(1)

Innovia Technology Ltd, Cambridge, UK

Helena Rubinstein

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the discipline of behavioural science developed from ideas emerging from social and health psychology, how these ideas challenged classical economic theory, and how they have been transferred, and successfully used by policy makers. Rubinstein explores the main principles of nudge theory and suggests that there is more to behavioural science than ‘nudging’. She concludes that businesses would benefit from applying the scientific method of behavioural science in the commercial sector, if they can overcome five major challenges to its implementation.

Keywords

Behavioural scienceNudge theoryScientific method

End Abstract

How good are you at driving?

Be honest—how good are your driving skills really?

Peoples’ sense of their own driving ability is deeply embedded. Most will tell you that they are ‘above average’. Even if you tell them that, of course, they can’t all be above average, they’ll say “yeah, but I am above average”.

This is relevant if you are trying to design systems to help people to drive better, and more safely. If you ask a person to describe her actions while, for example, merging from a smaller road onto a big one, she will probably describe a standard ‘textbook’ manoeuvre. She won’t tell you what happens when the phone rings, when she is distracted by her children in the back, when she is late for work, tired, or gripped by road rage. For the more experienced drivers, many driving behaviours have become habitual and automatic, so people aren’t really aware of what they are doing or thinking while driving. And the way we ask questions about driving doesn’t help. We tend to ask about driving behaviour as if everyone is always rational and we fail to take account of the social and emotional factors that influence what we do.

This was the problem facing the team at Innovia Technology when they were designing novel systems to improve safety on the road. So, how did the team face these challenges? The narrative below summarises some of their thinking and processes.

Glenn arrived at the meeting late. “Sorry, the traffic is always terrible when it’s been raining. There was a collision. People just don’t realise they need to change their driving behaviour when the conditions change.”

“You should know,” Marie, the psychologist, commented. “You’re the transport designer! Anyway, you’ve arrived at just the right moment—we’re talking about the solutions to prevent road accidents for The Ray.”

The Ray is a not-for-profit organisation that manages 18 miles of highway in Georgia that is working to make roads greener and safer. Its mission is ‘Zero Carbon, Zero Waste, Zero Death’. The Ray developed as a result of an epiphany by the founder of Interface, Inc, Ray C. Anderson. He had grown the business into the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpets, but realised that his company, and all of business and industry, was causing tremendous environmental damage. Furthermore, he recognised that only businesses like his were sufficiently large, capitalised, and organised to solve global environmental challenges. In 1994, he committed to making his organisation sustainable, so that it could eventually operate with no harm to the biosphere. For the remaining 17 years of his life, he proved that a company’s authentic commitment to environmental sustainability was not only morally right: it was also remarkably profitable. Today, The Ray describes itself as ‘a living lab for innovative ideas and technologies that can set a new standard for roadways around the world and prove that ambitious goals are within our reach’.

This meeting at Innovia was focused on how to improve driving safety.

Marie had been sifting through piles of statistics and reports on driving behaviour. “Did you know that 95% of accidents are caused by drivers themselves and 40% are rear-end collisions? Most crashes occur because people don’t pay attention to the road—they look but they don’t see, or they only see what they expect to see.”

The client relationship manager, Andy, who was a physicist, had been looking at all the solutions that had been tried previously. “There are so many ways of approaching this problem—signage, traffic calming, vehicle tracking, and more. And there’s so much data! How do we know where to focus?”

“Signs and signals don’t always help,” said Marie. “Only about 15% of people’s attention is given to road signs. If you show people ten signs while driving, they only recall seeing one of them! And when you increase the number of signs, you actually lull people into a false sense of security, so they pay even less attention”

“So, where should we focus?” asked Glenn.

“I’ve been looking at the psychology of driving behaviour,” said Marie. “There are several behavioural models we could use to understand the way in which drivers do, (or don’t) make good decisions. I think the most useful one here would be the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Let’s start with this. We might need to modify as we get new data, but it will help us to decide what is important initially.”

Over the next few weeks, the team investigated the types of accidents that were happening, explored why they were happening, and analysed the psychology of drivers. The behavioural model helped the group to identify effective ways to change driving behaviour.

A few weeks later, the team was reviewing the findings.

Marie started the conversation. “The key to increasing safety is to keep people alert. If they have too little to do, they don’t pay attention. Most drivers think they are better than average—they don’t like to be told what to do even if it is for their own good. Anything we create needs to fit with the driver’s own view of the situation, otherwise drivers won’t accept it.”.

“Different drivers make mistakes for different reasons—some are overconfident, some are nervous. We need to address all of these reasons,” Andy added.

Glenn agreed. “We’ve looked at lots of different ideas and have come up with a range of possible solutions. The strongest idea has never been done before, but it fits the behavioural model well and looks technically very promising. It involves using solar-powered LED road studs to give subtle cues to the driver to help them drive more safely. I think this is a really powerful option.”

And he was right. The team developed a range of ways in which the solar-powered s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I
• Part II
• Correction to: The Integration of Behavioural Science into Business
• Back Matter