1. Behavioural insight & policy
D a v id H a lp e r n
No10 / Cabinet Office
19th March 2011
1

2. Behavioural insight is one of several
new emphases in government thinking
Well-being
Cost efficiency
Behavioural
insights
Big Society & Transparency
decentralisatio & payment by
n results
UNCLASSIFIED 2

3. Coalition agreement
“There has been the assumption that central
government can only change people’s behaviour
through rules and regulations. Our government
will be a much smarter one, shunning the
bureaucratic levers of the past and finding
intelligent ways to encourage support and
enable people to make better choices for
themselves.”
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4. The Behavioural Insight Team
Steering Board
Jeremy Heywood (No10)
Steve Hilton / Rohan Silva (PM)
Polly Mackenzie / Julian A (DPM)
Robert Devereux (Head of Policy Profession)
Advisory Panel
Gus O’Donnell (tbc)
Richard Thaler (Chicago)
Peter Tufano (Oxford)
Theresa Marteau (Cambridge)
BIT Julian Le Grand (LSE)
David Halpern (Director) Peter John (UCL)
OGDs Owain Service (DD) + 6 Nick Chater (Warwick)
Dan Goldstein (LBS)
OCS / ERG
Well-being
UNCLASSIFIED
agenda

5. UNCLASSIFIED

6. UNCLASSIFIED

7. Health: behavioural factors explain the
majority of years of healthy life lost
Tobacco 12.2%
High blood
pressure 10.9%
Alcohol 9.2%
C holesterol 7.6%
Overweight 7.4%
Low fruit and
3.9%
vegetable intake
Physical
inactivity 3.3%
Illicit drugs 1.8%
Unsafe sex 0.8%
Iron deficiency 0.7%
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
UNCLASSIFIED 7
WHO, 2000

8. Information is generally not the problem
% Obese % Overweight % Obese
What do you think ‘eating a healthy diet’ involves?
Eating more fruit and vegetables Germany
England
Cyprus
Germany 77% Czech
Finland
UK 70% Malta **
Slovakia
Neth 61% Latvia
Hungary
Ireland 59% Ireland
UK Spain
Sweden 59% Greece
Women Slovenia* Men
EU 25 58% Luxembour
Estonia **
Spain 49% Lithuania**
Austria
France 44% Belgium
Netherlands
Italy 35% Sweden
Denmark
France **
Italy
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100
Fisher & Fisher, 1992; Psychological Bulletin UNCLASSIFIED
Eurobarometer 64.3 2005. Base c1,000 interviews in each country

9. MINDSPACE
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10. Social norms to encourage tax payment
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11. Taking out ‘friction costs’ to drive
insulation
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12. Personalised texts for fines
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13. Commitment devices used to reduce ‘did
not attends’
Reducing NHS Bedford
‘Did not attends’
Active commitment = filling
out your own appointment
card and repeating back the
time and date
(Also included norms, displaying
the number of people who
turned upon time)
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14. Sorting out unlicensed cars
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15. Big policy issues – not just marginal
Economic growth
Reduced regulation
Social mobility
Crime
Health
‘Big Society’
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16. Well-being and harnessing the ‘hidden
wealth of nations’
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17. ...economic growth is a means to an end.
If your goal in politics is to help make a
better life for people – which mine is –
and if you know, both in your gut and
from a huge body of evidence that
prosperity alone can’t deliver a better
life, then you’ve got to take practical
steps to make sure government is
properly focused on our quality of life as
well as economic growth, and that is
what we are trying to do.
25th November 2010
UNCLASSIFIED

18. Measuring subjective wellbeing
ONS is sampling 200,000 Britons to ask:
- How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- How happy did you feel yesterday?
- How anxious did you feel yesterday?
- To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life
are worthwhile?
Plus dashboard complement to GDP; Green Book changes;
and ‘social value’ test
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19. Rich nations are happier...
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20. A key puzzle is why our life satisfaction is not
increasing
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21. The Easterlin paradox
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22. A c r o s s U K : s a t is f ie d in
S e ve no a ks .
Top 10 Bottom 10
% 'Very Satisfied' with Life % 'Very Satisfied' with Life
Sevenoaks 37 Huntingdonshire 9
Chester 28 South Derbyshire 10
South Cambridge 28 Havering 10
Teignbridge 27 Luton 11
Rutland 27 Kingston upon Hull 11
Tonbridge & Malling 25 Salford 11
Bristol 25 East Ayrshire 11
Aberdeen 25 Sheffield 12
Warwick 24 Waltham Forest 12
Cardiff 24 Life Carlisle 12
From Whitely et al, 2004 http://www.esrc.ac.uk/esrccontent/news/september04-2.asp
22
UNCLASSIFIED

23. A wide variety of factors are associated with SWB
– though the causality is sometimes complex
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24. Social networks matter
Meta analysis: comparative odds of decreased mortality
LGID: Wellbeing - why bother?
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Source: Holt-Lundstad et al 2010

25. The formal economy is only a part of our lives
The ‘economy of regard’ is
1400
at least big as the ’real
Sleep economy’
1200
Sleep
1000
Med, education
Out leisure, shops
Medical, education
800 Sport, shopping,
Home leisure
travel nutrition
Shelter,
600 Services (upper) We spend on 23% of our
Home leisure
Services (other) waking time in paid work
400 Manual down 1hr 15min from
Shelter, nutrition 1960’s – with clear
200 evidence of convergence
Professional services
Other services across class
Manual
0
1961 1983 2001
UNCLASSIFIED Data from Geshunny, UK time budget studies; Halpern, 2010
Source:

26. Across the world, most dramatic transformations of
public services harness ‘hidden wealth’
Sweden
Patient Hotels
Singapore
Yellow Ribbon program
London
UNCLASSIFIED
10% vs 79% recidivism 26

27. Conclusions
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28. Media - wary early on
“David
Cameron’s
Vanity Project”
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29. Media has become supportive
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30. Conclusions
Behavioural insights offer practical, low cost policy tools
Well-being data will raise the profile of ‘social’ drivers
Use experimental approach
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31. UNCLASSIFIED 31

32. Annex
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33. Defaults are the most famous of a growing
range of applications
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34. Salience, social norms and ego to reduce
energy consumption
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35. Priming of honesty and consistency to
increase declarations
A study in the US found
that moving signature
boxes to the beginning of
application forms primed
customers to increase
self-reported miles driven
by 10%.
Signed at
UNCLASSIFIED Signed at end
beginning of
of form form

36. Experiments in giving (restaurant)
UNCLASSIFIED 36

37. MINDSPACE is being widely applied...
Messenger We are heavily influenced by who communicates information
Our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly
Incentives avoiding losses
Norms We are strongly influenced by what others do
Defaults We ‘go with the flow’ of pre-set options
Salience Our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us
Priming Our acts are often influenced by sub-conscious cues
Affect Our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions
Commitment We seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate acts
Ego We act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves
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38. Life
satisfaction
1981-2007
Ingelhart et al 2008 UNCLASSIFIED 38

39. Percent
‘Very happy’
1981-2007
Ingelhart et al 2008 UNCLASSIFIED 39

40. Social trust (national trends)
80
High
Sweden
trust
Norway
Denmark
Increasing Netherlands
60
Finland
1997-2001
Iceland
Japan
40 Spain Australia
N.Ire
W.Ger
Italy Ireland
USA
Mexico
Belgium S.Kor
UK
France
20
Argentina S.Africa Decreasing
Low
trust
0
0 20 40 60 80
1981-3
UNCLASSIFIED