The most effective nudge - Essay Example

Feedback: When Most and Least Effective Introduction In 2009, a randomised controlled trial was conducted in Oldham, Greater Manchester that measured the impact of feedback on the behaviour of households relative to its food waste recycling campaign. The town provides a garbage collection system with separate collections for garden waste, mixed recyclables, and residual waste. Food waste was subsequently added by separate collection on a weekly basis. A trial was conducted by randomly dividing the streets where such collections were made into the test and control groups. Households in the test group were sent feedback cards to inform them of how their street fared in relation to the neighbouring area. The feedback contained the following message: “Did you know: X percent of homes on A Street recycle their food waste. The average for the area is Y per cent.” A smiley or frown face was affixed on each card depending on the results with a concluding statement, “With your help your street could become the best recycling street in Oldham.” Households get a combination of one of the following cards each time a feedback card was delivered: smiley-smiley; smiley-frown; frown-frown, and; frown;-smiley. Surveys were made on three occasions: before the trial; after the first feedback delivery, and; after the second delivery (John et al, p. 51). As shown in Fig. 1, the results of the randomised trial show that the test group participation increased from 48.1% before the start of the trial to 50.1% after the second delivery. This translates to a 2.1% increase in household participation from the baseline measurement in August 2009. On the other hand, the control group had a 51.5% participation in the waste disposal scheme at the baseline, but subsequently decreased to 52% in October 2009 (John et al, p. 52). Feedback: When Most and Least Effective According to Thaler & Sunstein, the best way to help humans is to give them feedback. They cite as an example a laptop whose battery is dangerously going low. A user is thus, warned by the system that he has to plug it to a power source or shut it down to prevent interruption of its use that may lead to loss of data (2008, pp. 91-91). In the Oldham, Greater Manchester case, however, the feedback mechanism was not as explicit and evident but was subtly done to encourage household behavior towards food waste disposal participation. With reference to the said randomised trial, this paper discusses and analyses feedback as a form of nudge to determine its strength and weaknesses. As with all other forms of NUDGES, the three-steps-framework is applied so as to know how and when to feedback is most and least useful or applicable. In summary, the three steps consist of the following: (1) making explicit assumptions of the decision maker’s abilities; (2) making explicit the structure in which the nudge is found effective, and; (3) making explicit the behavioural principles exploited by the nudge (Fasolo 2011, p. 10) A. Assumption of the decision maker’s abilities According to Fischoff, there are three assumptions on eliciting values from people. Although in his article, Fischhoff uses these assumptions in relation to survey and interview methodology, the universality of these assumptions make them valid basis for the present choice architecture as well. These three assumptions are: people know what they want about all possible questions; people have stable, but incoherent perspectives, causing divergent responses, and; people lack articulated values on specific topic, but have pertinent basic values (1991, p. 840). The Oldham trial can be presumed to have elicited a specific value unconsciously relying upon the third assumption, viz. people lack articulated values on specific topic, but have pertinent basic values. One of these specific basic values exploited to shape the behaviour of households is group loyalty and identification. The specific information on the cards that indicate to households their respective streets’ ratings vis-à-vis the neighbourhood served to stir the feeling of esprit de corps, which motivated increased participation in the waste disposal campaign (John et al, p. 53). B. Making explicit the structure in which the nudge is found effective In the Oldham randomised trial, the feedback mechanism was used in motivating households to participate in the disposal scheme to help their street gain higher overall ranking vis-à-vis other streets. This is evident from the fact that the shorter the street the higher the rate of increase in food waste disposal participation, highlighting and underscoring the fact that smaller groups tend to have greater group identification than big groups. This behaviour may be underpinned by the fact that people tend to behave better in smaller and more compact groups because their behavior are more observable and evident than when they are in bigger and looser groups. Moreover, close neighbours tend to be affected by and influence each other. These facts are general and universal and may find applicability to other environments as well. On the other hand, it was observed that streets that had high participation in the disposal scheme before the trial had decreased participation during the trial. It was assumed that the rationale here was that these streets tended to lose steam after knowing that they had better comparative performance than others. In this sense, it can be said that feedback has an encouraging effect on those low-performing streets but had an opposite effect on high performing streets. The bottom line, therefore, is that feedback is best used to encourage a low performing individual to perform better, but is least effective when used to sustain an already well-performing one. C. Making explicit the behavioral principles exploited by the nudge The use of feedback in the Oldham trial was primarily motivational on the basis of the assumption that members of a close group are encourage by the idea that their participation contribute to the success of the group. Nonetheless, it can be said that the outcome is characterised by a negative type of incentive in that the motivational aspect originates from the idea that the failure of a household to participate in the food waste disposal scheme may reflect the overall rating of the entire street. Implied in such a behavioral phenomenon are the negative incentives of loss aversion and framing. The idea that the street was trailing others in the neighbor must have encouraged individual households to participate so that the entire street reflects better performance. The negative incentive was evident from the fact that streets with initial high participation had decreased participation most probably due to the loss of incentive after knowing that they were ranked high even from the start. References: Fasolo, B. (2011) Behind Nudges: 3-Step Scientific Framework and Our First Nudge. Lecture in Decision Science. Fischhoff, B. (1991) Value Elicitation: Is Anything There? American Psychologist, vol. 46(3) 835-847. John, P., Cotterill, S., Richardson, L., Moseley, A., Stoker, G,, Wales, C. and Smith, G. (2011). Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Using Experiments to Change Civic Behaviour. FT Press. Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge : improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New Haven : Yale University Press. Read More