A joint post by Prof. Shyama V. Ramani and Dr. Sanae Okamoto
‘The road to hell,’ goes the age-old proverb ‘is paved with good intentions’. In the 21st century, there can be no clearer example of this than the millions of underused or abandoned toilets in the developing world built for Sustainable Development Goal 6 on Clean Water and Sanitation.
Yes, technology and innovation can speed up economic growth and inclusive development, but they are clearly NOT enough. What’s missing, say Prof. Shyama V. Ramani and Dr. Sanae Okamoto of UNU-MERIT and Site4Society, are conscious efforts to gain real stakeholder engagement – in other words, getting local populations on board. To explore how this could be done, they organised a special session at this year’s ‘Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems’ (aka Globelics) in Accra, Ghana. Their session looked at ‘solution designs’ based on behavioural science, also known as ‘nudge strategies’, for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The session was opened by Prof. Ramani, who pointed out that studies by Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) scholars would be more useful if they were coupled with ideas for gaining engagement from various stakeholders. Then Dr. Okamoto introduced the general idea of behavioural science as one of the keys to solve engagement problems and difficulties of behavioural change. She illustrated the conceptual foundations of nudge-type behavioural strategies, giving practical examples such as when smaller plates are used in restaurants — which in turn mean less wasted food!
Prof. Dilip Soman from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, followed providing four key points. First, break down the SDGs into (many) specific behaviour change challenges. Then take ‘cognition, emotion, motivation and perception’ into account for understanding human behaviour and exploring the behavioural change intervention designs. Then understand the factors defining context dependence. Additionally, some nudge interventions that work in one country may not work in another country. In particular, societies and governments in the Global South are very different from the Global North. It is crucial therefore to test and analyse every activity in different contexts. Finally, take into account the reality of inertia and procrastination. People usually know what they ought to do, but they simply end up not doing it. So, don’t just teach or preach – help them, accompany them, persuade them – to make the desired changes.
Then came Mr. Ravenscroft from the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a social purpose company that started life at the office of the British Prime Minister, as the world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural sciences. To integrate behavioural insights in policy designs, it is important to identify which aspect of a challenge is behavioural, how an intervention programme can be enhanced by tackling the behavioural problem and finally, how the solution can be rapidly but rigorously tested before being scaled up to maximise the likelihood of success. For example, in Peru, teacher absenteeism in schools was a challenge. Two types of emails were tried out: ‘social value messages’ that stressed the importance of teacher-presence and ‘social norm messages’ that indicated the percentage of teacher-presence in the test schools group. The messages were sent to both teachers and directors. The social norm message was effective at significantly reducing absenteeism, but only for directors, providing valuable insights for designing future interventions.
Another telling illustration was provided by Ms. Okoye from the Busara Center for Behavioural Economics, which is unique in advancing and applying behavioural sciences in the Global South. Government-to-person (G2P) payments in developing countries are becoming a regular tool in financial inclusion and poverty reduction. The challenge is to make G2P payments trigger and sustain positive financial behaviour such as regular saving. Experimenting with a variety of nudge innovations, Ms. Okoye explained that regular reminders (e.g. beneficiaries are provided with a gold-plated coin, whose edge they can scratch every week after depositing their savings to visualise their total savings) worked best in Kenya; messages about the best saver in the group built competition in Tanzania; while group commitment devices performed well in Nigeria. These again illustrate the principle that experimentation with nudge innovations is necessary to find the best fit to context.
The motto of the Center for Advanced hindsight at Duke University is ‘Making people happier, healthier and wealthier with behavioural science’. Dr. Ting Jiang illustrated this with concrete examples. For instance, coronary heart disease and strokes are two of the biggest killers in the European Union – but how can you persuade people to eat less, move more and relax more to bring down the mortality rate, given their limited will-power? Here, she demonstrated that nudges that yield some sort of instant gratification, involve gamification, and quickly increase our social interaction can trigger positive behavioural change more effectively than simple public health announcements and education. Again, the reason for the action doesn’t matter, but it is important to accompany people to make the change.
Dr. Akom-Yamga from The CSIR-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI), while discussing the Ghanaian national strategy for SDG6 pointed out that realising the potential of nudge innovations requires answering the following questions: What are the critical elements of the choice architecture that can be changed at the macro, meso and micro levels? What specific nudging techniques can be applied to the identified elements? Who is best positioned to nudge at what level? What are the nation-specific and level-specific ethical issues that must be considered?
These are the questions that Ms. Tomai from UNU-MERIT is trying to answer. She explained that in Accra between 40-50% of waste is not collected, according to conservative estimates; there is only one formal landfill – which in turn leads to uncontrolled dumping and open burning. In this setting, behavioural change cannot be considered in isolation from investments in infrastructure and capacity building in waste collection and processing.
To conclude, good intentions driving investments in new infrastructure, social protection, scientific and innovation capabilities may not be enough to make the SDGs happen. More than a simple buy-in, a real behavioural change might be required from some of the stakeholders. And this is why, before implementing any major development programme, thought has to be given to identify and design the complementary nudge strategies required for impact.
The opinions expressed here are the author’s own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of UNU.
RAMANI OKAMOTO INTRO
2018 GLOBELICS International Conference