How-to for govts to set up a nudge unit

This Behavioral Insights Toolkit was created as a practical resource for use by IRS employees and researchers seeking to incorporate Behavioral Insights into their work. This Toolkit describes the field of Behavioral Insights, its potential benefits, and how Behavioral Insights can be practically applied to serve taxpayers and help the IRS achieve its mission. It highlights examples of opportunity areas where Behavioral Insights has been applied both internally at the IRS and across the globe.

As noted here, common principles underlie and unify many key features of human behaviour. A quick guide - "SIMPLER" - articulates a set of common "nudges" that can be used to improve programme outcomes and efficiency: Social influence - e.g., persuade by referencing peers Implementation prompts - e.g., establish steps to desired action Mandated deadlines - e.g., make deadlines prominent Personalisation - e.g., use name, not generic greeting Loss aversion - e.g., emphasise losses, not just gains Ease - e.g., reduce steps in a process Reminders - e.g., use phone calls, texts, postcards

dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin, serotonin

Lifestyle Gamification Case Stats and Figures OPower: reduced measurable energy consumption by over $100M Aetna: increased daily healthy activities by 50% with an average engagement of 14 minutes on the site ClinicalAdvisor.com: embedded a social platform that improved user submission by 300%, comments by 400%, and Slideshow Visualizations by 53% Bottle Bank Arcade: gamified bottle bank was used 50 times more than conventional bottle bank. The World’s Deepest Bin: 132% more trash collected compared to conventional bin Piano Stairs: 66% more of people use the stairs, if they can produce music with it Speed Camera Lottery: a lottery system that causes a 22% reduction of driving speed Toilette Seat: 44% of increase in lifting the toilet seat when urinating Nike: used gamified feedback to drive over 5,000,000 users to beat their personal fitness goals every day of the year Recycle Bank grew a community of 4 million members by providing a gamified recycling platform. Chevrolet Volt: uses a green/amber indicator to give drivers visual feedback of their driving style and reduced the number of people exceeding the speed limit by 53%

Developing Games for Health Behavior Change: Getting Started

The amount and nature of value in a particular product or service always lie in the eye of the beholder, of course. Yet universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in current markets or break into new ones. A rigorous model of consumer value allows a company to come up with new combinations of value that its products and services could deliver. The right combinations, our analysis shows, pay off in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a particular brand, and sustained revenue growth. We have identified 30 “elements of value”—fundamental attributes in their most essential and discrete forms. These elements fall into four categories: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact. Some elements are more inwardly focused, primarily addressing consumers’ personal needs. For example, the life-changing element motivation is at the core of Fitbit’s exercise-tracking products. Others are outwardly focused, helping customers interact in or navigate the external world. The functional element organizes is central to The Container Store and Intuit’s TurboTax, because both help consumers deal with complexities in their world.

Max Bazerman, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership; Odette van de Riet, Leader of BIT IenM, the Behavioral Insight Team of the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment; and David Halpern, Chief Executive of the Behavioural Insights Team and Board Director of the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, joined moderator Iris Bohnet, Professor of Public Policy at HKS and Director of the Women and Public Policy Program, and co-Director of the Behavioral Insights Group, in a conversation on behavioral insights. The panel discussed its experiences applying behavioral economics findings, such as "nudge" techniques, to issues of public interest.

Underpinned by reinforcement learning, a fundamental theory of the dynamics of behavior change, BCD also incorporates theories about the evolution of behavioral control and human motivation, and a revised version of 'behavior settings' theory which helps explain the relationship between individuals and the environment. These theories suggest that, in order to change specific behaviors, interventions must create surprise, revalue the target behavior and facilitate performance of the changed behavior by modifying the environment in which it takes place. BCD involves a process for designing such interventions that follows five steps: Assess, Build, Create, Deliver, and Evaluate.

BIT uses a simple framework to apply behavioral science to policy: in order to encourage a behavior, make it Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST). The sections below give some examples of how this framework can be applied to improve health and health care. Many of these initiatives were tested through low-cost randomized controlled trials; we believe that such trials could be used much more by health care providers and policymakers to improve their everyday activities.

From Brian Cugelman

Pro-vaccine messages do not always work as intended. The effectiveness of those messages may vary depending on existing parental attitudes toward vaccines. For some parents, they may actually increase misperceptions or reduce vaccination intention.