Delacourt: ‘The nudge unit’: Ottawa’s behavioural-science team investigates how Canadians feel about vaccines, public health and who to trust

2021/02/23 Leave a comment

Innovative and appropriate:

Vaccines are one miracle of science in this pandemic. But another scientific experiment has also produced surprisingly speedy and widespread results over the past year. It happened in the realm of behaviour science — and ordinary citizens were the laboratory subjects. 

One year ago, few people would have believed that science would come up with a vaccine, ready for mass immunization around the world, by the start of 2021. 

But who would have also predicted that citizens could be persuaded to turn their lives upside down, wear masks and isolate themselves from their families and friends for months on end? 

“I know we’re asking a lot,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in early April, when no one knew just how much COVID-19 would force Canadians into behaviour change on a grand scale. “A lot” is an understatement: not since wartime has the government had to request this much of the citizenry for so long. 

Yet while the government’s medical scientists have been front and centre on the public stage almost every day since last March, the behavioural scientists have mostly been operating under the radar. If you know where to look, though, evidence of the behaviour-nudging team keeps peeking out under all those public proclamations from Canada’s COVID-19 crisis managers. 

When Trudeau and the premiers use their podiums to calm fears or tell hard truths about the pandemic, for example, their words don’t just come from hunch or political instincts. Reams of behavioural data is being collected by government throughout the pandemic, on everything from people’s general emotions about COVID-19 to their willingness to get vaccinated. 

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, spoke earlier this month about the problem of vaccine hesitancy in this country and what the government knows about it. It was one of the few times that public officials have made direct reference to the behaviour-studying unit inside government. 

“Some of the studies are actually carried out by the Privy Council Office, where there is a behavioural insight team,” Tam said. “We do know that the intention for Canadians to get the vaccine is actually quite high and I think has improved since we started the vaccine campaign itself.” 

Tam went on to explain how people’s views on vaccines are shaped by where they get their information. Since you are reading this story in a mainstream news medium, you might be interested to know that you’re more likely to feel positive about getting immunized. Consumers of traditional information sources tend to have more trust in vaccines and what the government is saying about them. Conversely, if you’re the kind of person who gets your news from social media, you’re likely more wary of vaccines. 

So the government is doing some fine-tuning of its communication channels, Tam explained at this Feb. 5 briefing. “We know that we have to work with the internet and social media companies and that has been happening with Facebook, Google, YouTube and others,” she said. 

That behavioural-insight team Tam mentioned is actually called the “impact and innovation unit” of government, which was set up within the PCO in 2017, meant for more low-key work than it has been doing, now that the pandemic suddenly created an urgent need for its insights into how citizens behave.

Headed up by veteran public servant Rodney Ghali, this group has kept its eye on the huge social-science experiment of the COVID-19 crisis. (Ontario too has a behavioural insights unit, which has been working closely with the federal government over the course of the pandemic.) 

In normal times, this federal team would have been researching questions such as what would motivate people to invest more in RRSPs or cut down on food waste. 

Its members prefer to remain low-profile — a couple of them talked to me for this article, but on condition that they would not be named or quoted.

Results of the team’s research are quite public, though — anyone can check them out on their web page, along with reports of some communication campaigns they’ve tested on the population and what the ads were supposed to achieve. The most visible ad — one Canadians may remember — is one that depicted COVID-19 as a green cloud, spreading noxiously over the buttons in an elevator. 

The behaviour being studied by the government has shifted as the pandemic has dragged on, naturally. In the beginning, the research focused a lot on compliance with public health measures, what it would take to get people to wear masks, and so on. 

Nowadays, the main concern is with vaccines and whether enough people will take them to achieve herd immunity. Medical science handles the immunity part of that equation — behavioural scientists have to build the herd. For that to happen, the government has to know where and how to administer the nudging. 

“Nudge” is the operative word. Britain blazed the trail for the use of behavioural insights in government back in 2010 when it set up a team inside the cabinet office nicknamed ‘the nudge unit.” The name comes from the hugely influential book “Nudge” by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which laid out how people could be influenced to make better choices in their lives. 

Sunstein is now the chair of an advisory group for the World Health Organization, set up specifically to use behavioural insights in COVID-19 management. And that leads us right back to Canada, which has taken the WHO’s tool for tapping behavioural insights in the pandemic and put it to comprehensive use in this country for nearly a year now. According to officials inside the behaviour unit, Canada has made the most comprehensive use of the WHO tool, creating a chronicle of behavioural ups and downs throughout the COVID-19 crisis. 

Since last April, a static group of about 2,000 Canadians — chosen randomly but in proportion to statistical, demographic considerations — have been taking part in a rolling series of surveys, plumbing their attitudes and behaviour on all things pandemic-related. The process is called “COVID-19 snapshot monitoring,” which has been shortened to COSMO.

In the early months, the COSMO respondents were a dreary lot, reporting that they believed things would get worse before they got better. But they were keen on vaccines — keener than they are now, in fact. Last April, more than 70 per cent of respondents were interested in a vaccine if it was either safe or effective. By the end of 2020, that enthusiasm had dropped to the low and mid-sixties. 

Herd immunity is generally accepted to be around 70 per cent, so governments — with the help of the behaviour scientists — need to get those numbers up again. 

The COSMO group has also been asked regularly about which people they trust to provide information — perhaps one of the more important pieces of insight sought by government in this pandemic. If you’re going to nudge the population in one direction or another, after all, it’s crucial to know who should do the nudging. 

Repeated waves of data on this issue show that public health officials rank high on the trusted list, whereas politicians and the news media rank lower. This would explain why Tam and her provincial colleagues have become household names over the past year (the provincial public-health chiefs have actually been rated slightly higher for trust than their federal counterparts). 

On top of vaccine hesitancy, the biggest concern right now for the behaviour monitors is simple COVID-19 fatigue. For almost a year now, governments have been asking, imploring, begging and arguing for citizens to keep large areas of their lives on hold. The same tools that worked last April, when Trudeau was “asking a lot,” may not keep working over the long term. 

In December, the COSMO participants started being asked about pandemic fatigue. Here’s what the behaviour unit learned: “Adherence to key protective behaviours remains reportedly high, and many participants are not getting tired of having to wash their hands frequently, physical distancing or wearing a mask. However, most participants (80 per cent) indicate they are getting tired or somewhat tired of having to avoid gathering with loved ones.”

It’s probably safe to assume that the weariness has only grown since then, but the results of more recent surveys haven’t yet gone online. 

Whenever the pandemic is over, most Canadians may be too busy getting back to their normal lives to reflect on the massive social-science experiment that has taken place over the planet this past year. But that radical change in people’s lives is the other great scientific achievement of COVID-19, one that may have given government important clues on how to modify citizens’ behaviour for other big global issues — such as climate change, for instance. 

“The behaviour and choices made by each and every one of us matter a great deal,” Tam said in a briefing earlier this year, which is why a small behavioural-science unit inside government suddenly became a big deal in 2020. 

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/02/21/the-nudge-unit-ottawas-behavioural-science-team-investigates-how-canadians-feel-about-vaccines-public-health-and-who-to-trust.html

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Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

2018/10/20 Leave a comment

An interesting report on using behavioural insights and nudges in immigration and integration policies.

Although written largely from the perspective of Europe, the recommendations below can be more broadly applied with the two fundamental points IMO being the need to consider nudges as part of the policy toolkit and the importance of including the “host” society in these initiatives:

As policymakers contemplate these fundamental questions, it is important that they acknowledge the potential limitations of a behavioural insights approach. One such challenge is that it generally focuses on fine-tuning an existing system rather than wholesale change. This may set a natural ceiling on what behavioural interventions can do within the field of integration, where many commentators emphasise the need for structural and organisational changes in the face of deep-seated inequalities. Behavioural approaches also tend to put the onus on individuals, and applying this to integration may prove particularly challenging when working with vulnerable groups of newcomers such as refugees.

Nonetheless, behavioural approaches offer potentially significant benefits as countries work to tackle press-ing challenges that affect immigrants, disadvantaged native-born groups, and wider communities—from the reduction of segregation, prejudice, and conflict to increased positive educational and employment outcomes for traditionally underperforming groups. In short, behavioural interventions may not create major structural change in and of themselves, but they can be powerful tools to make existing systems work better and to buttress change efforts.

Policymakers interested in investing in behavioural approaches to integration should consider the following lessons:

  • ƒRigorously pilot and test. The behavioural approach provides a roadmap for improving the culture of evaluation across government. It suggests that governments should resist the urge to introduce wholesale, top-down change without first testing and evaluating what works on a smaller scale. This is particularly salient given the pressure on integration policymakers in European countries to act, and act fast. Equally important, governments should be prepared to stop investing in programmes that evaluations show to be ineffective, and to share those findings so other policymakers can learn from them.
  • ƒBe realistic about potential impacts and prepared to scale up effective interventions. Most successful behavioural approaches might be expected to increase uptake or interactions by 5 to 7 per cent; indeed, this would be considered highly successful for many.130 This may seem insubstantial, but it is important to understand the impact that even small effects can have if made at scale and across populations, especially if the cost is reasonably low. Furthermore, if multiple interventions are introduced to build social capital and increase cohesion, they are likely to result in complementary effects.
  • ƒTake steps to understand the user experience. An effective behavioural approach requires a deep qualitative understanding of the context in which decisions and actions take place. Taking steps to understand how individuals experience policies and systems can facilitate understanding of why, for example, disadvantaged groups may be less inclined to take up services to which they are entitled (e.g., health check-ups), even after receiving information about the problems this could lead to further down the line. By understanding user experience, policymakers can begin to explore more innovative nudging approaches to improve take-up of services. While reducing the cognitive load involved in accessing services is good practice across the board, minimising the time and mental costs of engaging with public services is especially important for newcomers adjusting to life in a new society and for those who have experienced considerable trauma, as in the case of refugees.

While the segment of the behavioural-science field focused on integration remains nascent, its early findings have substantial promise. Among the lessons they recommend are:

  • Focus on developing the skills that everyone needs to live in diverse societies. Skills such as empathy are often described as innate, but studies show they can be developed, particularly in classrooms. With many European countries updating citizenship curricula to foster common values or even guard against extremism, there are opportunities to revisit the role that schools play in nurturing the citizens of tomorrow. Teaching a growth mindset or encouraging perspective-taking can help young people develop less rigid views about others and ultimately reduce prejudice. A host of simple initiatives could also be trialled to blur the lines between in- and outgroups, with the aim of promoting a sense of cohesion and belonging.
  • Explore ways to engineer social connections. Segregation is not an intractable problem, though it persists in many societies and aspects of life. There are numerous (and relatively low-cost) tools and techniques to encourage young people to build social connections with peers of different backgrounds. Again, educational settings represent promising venues, whether through in-class activities or cooperative learning programmes across schools. Beyond schools, there is promise in inclusive neighbourhood events and citizenship processes that encourage more active engagement between immigrants and other members of local communities. Behavioural approaches could also be implemented in workplaces and other areas of public life, such as residential planning, with positive impacts.
  • Indirect contact can be effective and scalable. Research has shown that indirect contact (via broad-cast media, social media, or virtual reality) can have important effects on reducing prejudice. There is also promise in programmes designed to build empathy or showcase altruism (moral elevation) as tools for encouraging behaviours that support integration. Government and civil society both have important roles to play in encouraging direct and indirect contact between groups that may not otherwise interact.
  • Increase aspirations and motivations in order to reduce barriers. Traditional government integration efforts tend to focus on tangible barriers, such as language. But beyond this, newcomers encounter other complex barriers, such as low bridging social capital, limited aspirations, or a heavy cognitive load, that can hold people back in areas such as employment and education. Traditional policy approaches to reshaping motivations and aspirations that rely on financial incentives and sanctions may not have the desired effect; immigrants and other underserved groups may benefit from more sophisticated tools that take into consideration group-specific behavioural insights. Governments have a relatively high-impact (and low-cost) lever at their disposal: public-sector hiring. Testing how different messages can help or hinder job seekers overcome barriers such as stereotype threat could help individuals find high-quality employment while helping governments improve the diversity of the public-sector workforce.

Addressing the integration challenges of today and tomorrow will require a radical expansion of the policy toolbox. To enable this integration-policy reboot, policymakers would do well to attend to the potential of behavioural insights. At low cost, and with a strong evidence base, these type of policy interventions are likely to increase cohesion and narrow socioeconomic gaps, while also increasing civic integration.

Source: Applying Behavioral Insights to Support Immigrant Integration and Social Cohesion

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Why policy-makers should care about behavioural science: Supriya Syal

2018/01/24 Leave a comment

As someone who likes ‘nudge’ and related behavioural approaches, liked this article for the examples it cited, both outside and inside Canada:

Classic examples of behavioural interventions for the public sector include measures that help people save more for retirement, consume less electricity, be more likely to pay taxes, sign up for organ donations and get jobs. But the application of behavioural science to policy-making is becoming increasingly diversified around the world. For instance, the Copenhagen Airport in Denmark, in partnership with iNudgeyou (a Denmark-based social purpose company), combatted the problem of people smoking just outside terminal entrances by using stickers that guide them to a designated smoking area a few metres away. Instead of telling people what not to do (no-smoking zones near doors), providing guidance on what behaviour is desirable (smoking zones away from doors) proved more effective. In South Africa, the government of the Western Cape, in partnership with Ideas42 (a US-based nonprofit behavioural design and consulting firm) and the University of Cape Town, used a computer-based “HIV risk game” to educate at-risk youth about HIV. Instead of the typical one-off information brochure, a gamification approach that got youth to make repeated decisions about HIV risk and provided immediate feedback about their choices was a more powerful aid for increasing young people’s understanding of such risks. In Australia, Alfred Health (a hospital), working with Deakin University, Monash University, VicHealth and the Behavioural Insights Team (UK), increased healthier food choices in its cafés by using a traffic-light colour system to classify nutritional value and portion sizes of beverages. Instead of telling people about the health costs of sugary beverages, the team marked drinks as red (most unhealthy), amber or green (most healthy), and “red” drinks were simply removed from the displays and self-service refrigerators and placed under the counters — still available for sale, just less obviously so. The total number of beverages that were sold didn’t change, but the sale of unhealthy sugary beverages went down by 28 to 71 percent in a range of trials.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency is successfully using behavioural nudges to get people to pay outstanding taxes and to file their taxes online. The Privy Council Office Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU) is using behavioural insights to help Statistics Canada increase its survey response rates, and to help the Department of National Defence recruit more women into the armed forces. The Innovation Lab at Employment and Social Development Canada has used behavioural insights to help people find jobs and has partnered with the IIU to increase uptake of the Canada Learning Bond among low-income families. And the foremost public sector behavioural insights group in Canada, the Ontario Behavioural Insights Unit, has succeeded in increasing organ donation rates and online licence-plate-sticker renewals using behavioural insights.

Despite these initiatives and widespread academic expertise, support and talent, the public sector application of behavioural science in Canada lags behind that of other comparable nations, and the opportunity to create better outcomes for Canadians through behavioural evidence-based policy is immense. Moreover, the bulk of behavioural-insights policy work in Canada amounts to what one might call repair jobs — it is as if we were retrofitting old buildings to make them work in the modern-day context — and behavioural science interventions are used mainly to improve implementation or compliance with a pre-existing policy. Which is important, no doubt, but we could also be building new structures that benefit from modern advancements and would be much better suited to their users’ needs. Indeed, behavioural science provides powerful tools that could help us get it right at the policy design and formation stages. And, in addition to using behavioural science to design better for the public, we could also be using these insights to design better for public servants. But there are few, if any, applications of behavioural science interventions to organizational decision-making within the Canadian government or the bodies that it regulates, so this is a significant area for exploration.

Some of our greatest challenges today are large-scale, complex problems of public policy, public perception and public action: climate change, vaccinations against infectious diseases, diversity and inclusion of historically marginalized groups, humanitarian crises, to name a few. Behavioural science promises empirically validated solutions that are derived from an understanding of the human beings that make up that “public.” And it rests its propositions on evidence in favour of what works to help people themselves make decisions that are better for them, so they can lead better lives. A pretty irresistible call to arms, wouldn’t you say?

via Why policy-makers should care about behavioural science

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