1. Deirdre O’Reilly Tracey Budd Social Research & Behaviour Change
Applying behavioural insights to improve safety on the Strategic Network
Deirdre O’Reilly
Tracey Budd
Social Research & Behaviour Change

2. Our imperatives Safety Delivery Customer Service
Understanding who our customers are now & in the future
Attitudes, beliefs, expectations, intentions & behaviours
People – centred & evidence based approaches
Safety
Customer Service
Delivery
Develop & support positive behaviours;
Discourage & change negative/risky behaviours;
Support development & implementation of innovations that facilitate adoption of new sustainable behaviours; &
Influence demand/travel choices, improve safety, security & journey quality.

3. Which table is longer?
Both have same dimensions – but its difficult for our brains to compute.

4. Who has read/heard of ‘nudge’?
What do you know about ‘nudge’?
Thaler and Sunstein – first published in We are not rational beings – we err and have known biases. Knowing these we can influence the ‘choice architecture’ to influence decisions and actions. Subtle changes. Leaves freedom of choice.
Many other ‘popular science’ books covering similar ground around how as humans we think and behave and how we may be influenced

6. Nudges Between 1910 and 1920 cars usage in the UK increased tenfold.
This led to a problem with car crashes – especially going around corners.
The solution? Nudge people’s behaviour, get them to stick to their side of the road, by painting a white line down the middle of the road.
Since then, there have been many more driving signs and symbols created – all are context that nudge people’s behaviour.

7. Behaviour & behaviour change
Humans are emotional, irrational, social creatures – we interact with each other and the world we inhabit. We don’t always behave as we are told to.

8. Two cognitive systems System 1 System 2 FAST Automatic
Little or no effort
No sense of control
Intuitive
SLOW
Effortful
Needs attention
Controllable
Analytical
Ask if they know what system 1 and system 2 is
Daniel Kannheman’s nobel-winning work in late 70’s, in which he identified two distinct ways of thinking. Thinking fast & slow.
Refers to two cognitive systems…
FAST: colour of grass, 2x2, daily commute
SLOW: complex problems, planning a trip overseas or a one-off business trip to another part of the country

9. Much of our decision making happens in system 1
Biases
Intuition
Mental short-cuts
Emotions
Social influence
Intuition – Aggregate of past experience and assumptions
Biases – stereotypes, assumptions, and our tendencies to focus on some aspects of a situation and ignore others, our tendency to ignore information that doesn’t support our pre-existing opinions and beliefs.
Mental short-cuts – we’re fast and frugal thinkers, using rules-of-thumb and instinct a lot of the time, rather than careful deliberation
Emotions – choices are often made on their emotional resonance, not deliberate logic
Social influence – we social creatures, often conforming to the masses, and use others as a source of information.

10. What influences behaviour?
Why change behaviour?
Knowledge & awareness
Capability & self efficacy
Social, cultural & moral norms
Attitudes
Emotions
Habit
Structural factors
physical
social
environmental
Cost
More advantageous
More ‘me’
More prevalent
More doable
Or the current behaviours become less attractive, less doable, etc.
Christmas at al DfT 2009
BI and BC approaches ask us to consider

11. Individual, Social & Material model
This sociological based model was developed by Andrew Darnton et al for the Scottish Office. Suits Highways England because of the importance of the active actors that drivers are in the physical and social environment that is the Strategic Road Network. Can also think about the introduction of the charge for plastic shopping bags in supermarkets:
Is it a 5p tax? Yes but this is a very marginal cost
Is it a change in behaviour that results from a shift in the social acceptability? Yes, newspapers were full of how to avoid the bag charge!
The choice architecture has changed - plastic bags are no longer freely available and you are required to ask or be asked if you want one – making it clear that if you have one then you may be the sort of person who doesn’t acre enough about the environment to plan to bring a simple bag with you when shopping.
Its not a nudge but it does have public support. Changing behaviours requires an understanding of issues around public acceptability.

12. Greater emphasis and effort
A holistic approach to compliance
Enforcement
Sanction for drivers that choose not to comply
Targeted advice to deter non-compliance
Greater emphasis and effort
Encouragement
Information, instruction and training that assist drivers to comply
Education
+ Engagement + Evaluation
Infrastructure and operations that make it easy to comply
Engineering
Highways England's approach to improving compliance.
The greatest effort is spent getting the engineering right and this is an ongoing process. We have many active media campaigns to increase driver knowledge and understanding and work closely with the DfT Think campaign team and other road safety partnerships.
Enforcement is always seen as the last resort and should be use against those that fail to change their behaviour.

13. Understanding our customers: e.g. segmentation of drivers
Highways England has developed a segmentation based on self reported behaviours and attitudes of motorway drivers. These are clustered into ….

14. Higher frequency users of SRN
Over confident
Anxious
Lower
frequency users of SRN
Confident
Careful

15. Alice & Izzy

16. Approaches to sustained behaviour change adopt a wide range of levers
Information &
education
Regulation &
enforcement
Incentives
‘Nudging’
It is not just individual behaviour, consider the social and physical environment
It is not just about ‘nudge’
Limit choice by cost & reward
Maintains choice. Informs & persuades
Limits choice by force
Maintains freedom of choice, but makes good choices easier to make
Behaviour change
Using a sound theoretical base and robust evidence on insights into behaviours, groups etc
When talking more about behaviour change we all recognise ‘nudging’ – this is very important but its not the only tool. Make certain choices easier and more likely – without limiting choice. Libertarian Paternalism. Emerged form the marketing world who have a wealth of experience in customer engage ment and increasingly applied to public policy issues.
Evidence suggests, depending on the particular behaviour that a whole range of levers are often required to change behaviour and to sustain that change. Road Safety has a strong history in this area – consider seat belt wearing or drink driving.

17. Tools & guides
Social
Timely
Attractive
Easy
EAST – BIT toolkit demonstrating fours simple ways to apply behavioural insights
MINDSPACE – BIT framework to aid the application of behavioural science to the policymaking. Sets out nine of the most robust influences on our behaviour.
A number of existing published guides exist

18. Tools & guides
Comprehensive guide from the RAC Foundation of Behaviour Change Techniques, with examples and evaluations.
Government guide on behavioural approaches to influencing organisations

19. Four simple ways to apply behavioural insights EAST
Social
Timely
Attractive
Easy
EAST framework:

20. Make it EASY Simplify messages Make it more salient Remove frictions
Harness power of defaults
Easy: People are much more likely to do something if it is easy and low hassle. So simplify things as much as possible. Remove friction (or add friction if you want to discourage a behaviour). Make the behaviour seem easy to people by removing mental barriers
Simplifying messages can be really effective. For example, research has suggested that displaying fuel efficiency in terms of litres of fuel saved per 100 miles of driving (rather than as an increase in the number of miles per litre of fuel) helps individuals to conceptualise the efficiency of different vehicles and the cost of alternative travel choices.
There are a number of other ways to make things easy :
Firstly, we have a strong tendency to go with the flow - and stick with what are called “default options”. So – a default is an outcome that occurs if we do not choose otherwise. For example, workplace pensions and organ donation can be set to automatically enrol people, and where this has happened participation rates have dramatically increased.
A similar approach in congestion policy might involve requiring journey-planning tools such as Google Maps or Citymapper to propose public transport as the default option, and requiring users to actively select car travel if they want to go on the roads.
Related to defaults, we have anchoring. When we lack knowledge about a topic, or we are ignorant about something specific we tend to look for an initial anchor on which to base decisions.
We are surrounded by these anchors every day.  So for example, how many of us walk into a shop and think we are getting a good deal because it is less than RRP? 
Finally, to make a certain behaviour easy for people it helps if you can make the reasons why they should be behaving that way easy for them to recall. This is called the “Availability heuristic”. If something can be recalled easily, people think it must be important and they are more likely to act on it.
So, it’s helpful to think about how we can increase the availability of the information that we want people to base their decisions on. For example through:
Repetition, e.g. of the reason why you should behave in a certain way
Highlighting high profile incidents
Through vivid or emotional campaigns and messages
Or through providing information via people who are well known and respected by the people you’re trying to communicate with.

21. Make it ATTRACTIVE Attract attention Make it personal Make it salient
Engage people’s emotional selves
Design & communicate rewards and sanctions
Attractive: People are drawn to things that catch their attention. This is all about make the key points stand out, making things salient to people. This might be as simply as personalising, addressing people by their name.
There are other ways to attract people’s attention. Our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions. Think about how motivating shame, guilt, disgust, regret are.
Studies in neuroscience have examined people with damage to the emotional centres of their brain. Some people might think that this type of damage leads to a spock type figure, logically computing options and coming up with the most rational choice
People are twice as sensitive to loss compared to equivalent gains but beware in safety campaigns

22. Make it SOCIAL Choose the right messenger
Demonstrate that people perform the desired behaviour (“social norms”)
Use the power of people’s social networks
Encourage people to make a commitment to others
People are social. They are influenced by what others are doing or have done and by the social commitments they make. This plays out in a number of ways.
Messenger: We are heavily influenced by who communicates information to us. People who are respected role models are perceived to be more credible, reliable, informed and trusted, than others. People are more likely to adopt behaviours from people who are well known or in a trusted position.
2) Social norms: People have a tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. This is called ‘social norms’ or the ‘bandwagon effect’. If you can somehow demonstrate that other people are performing the desired behaviour, then your target audience are more likely to perform that behaviour. For example, HMRC have many trials where including factual statements that most people had already paid their tax increased tax payment rates by a substantial amount.
In the context of congestion reduction, transport authorities could inform individuals of the proportion of their neighbours who use car pools or cycle to work. Even when norms are weak, nudges can be applied to embed socially positive attitudes or behaviours. For example, individuals who commute at off-peak times or use public transport could be given a platform to communicate their socially conscious travel choices to their peers.
3) Power of networks: You might also consider how you could use the power of people’s networks. Research has shown that behaviours around health and safety are contagious in a network. For example, did you know that you are 50% more likely to quit smoking if someone close in your network also quits, such as a family member or close friend.
Studies show that if you target the right people in a network, then you’re much more likely to get bang for your buck. You need to look for the so called hubs – people who have a lot of contacts. If they change their behaviour they’ll pass that behaviour change on through their connections and it will spread. Are there any ways you can play on people’s networks of family and friends?
You could think about this type of intervention for encouraging car sharing to reduce congenstion

23. Make it TIMELY Prompt people when they are likely to be most receptive
Consider the immediate costs and benefits
Help people plan their response to events
Timely: Interventions are more effective before habits have formed, or at specific moments of change (e.g. moving house or having a family). Intervene at these key points.
When individuals first encounter a new journey, they must consciously evaluate alternative modes, departure times, parking options, etc. However, once a conscious choice has been made, subsequent travel decisions for subsequent journeys are likely to be made by reflex or habit.
A key consequence of this behaviour is that transport policy interventions should focus on influencing behaviour at the point at which habits are formed, not once they are already entrenched.
For example, new home-owners or tenants could be provided with information on their local cycling infrastructure or bus routes, or given discounted car club vouchers when they move in. Similar information could be provided by companies to individuals starting new jobs. Such well-timed interventions could shape an individual’s travel choices at the time when long-term decisions or purchases are made.
Ask yourself, are there any ways that you might intervene before habits have formed, or at moments of change in people’s lives and communities?
Findings in the field of behavioural economics have also shown that when people compare now to later, we usually prefer smaller, more immediate payoffs to larger, more distant ones.
People also prefer benefits now and costs in the future. For the same psychological reasons, people also undervalue the potential costs of a risky behaviour now, if they estimate that harm or cost may happen but in the future.
Are there any ways to make the costs of the unwanted behaviour seem very real NOW instead of some distant possibility – for example, evocative risk communications.
Finally, planning a behaviour makes it much more likely to achieve a future goal. One solution to this problem is to help people make concrete, specific plans. The more concrete the plans, the more specific they are about when people will perform a behaviour, the more effective they are.
This is called a implementation intention, and using this technique it is possible to break complex goal into manageable actions.
Almost three quarters of motorway incidents related to tyre failure could be prevented if drivers carry out simple checks, according to research conducted by Bridgestone types (press release April 2018).

24. Smart Motorways Red X advisory letter – a people centred approach
Please note that this is a fictional mock up of the letter, and contains no information traceable to participants, or anyone else.
A clearer version of the letter is included in the appendix.
Another example, more of a ‘nudge’ approach has been to review and revise the Red X/DHS letters issued to those identified as not complying on our smart motorways. These advisory letters have been issued to many drivers. We worked with CI team to utilise their contract with Ipsos MORI for the customer panel to a)use a behavioural science specialist to review and revise letters e.g. drawing on query theory b) to use on line panel and depth interviews to test the new letter – how people respond, what they felt, what they understood, did not understand.
If you have a look at the original letter quickly – now have a look at the revised version.

25. Social Timely Attractive Easy
Simplify messages, direct calls to action
Use defaults & anchoring
Remove friction costs
Increase salience
Social
Timely
Attractive
Easy
Key decision moments
Use prompts
Help people plan
Give feedback
Personalise
Catch their attention
Cater to the emotion
Optimise incentives
Choose the right messenger
Highlight the normative behaviour
Use existing social networks
EAST framework:
MAIB Behavioural Insights workshop
Here’s a summary of what we covered – you can combine some of these to create a bigger impact.
April 19

26. Sustained Behaviour Change
Robust behavioural insights.
Multifaceted, multidisciplinary approaches over a sustained period of time.
Evaluation.
Behaviour change is a process not an event.

27. Thank you