5- Application of behavioural economics theory

Part of the reason the government released the Mindspace document therefore was to encourage policy makers to attempt to generalise from current studies, and encourage experimentation of their own. To that end they also released a section on how to apply Mindspace.

The main points have been summarised below.

• It should be understood that behavioural approaches are not meant to be an alternative to traditional methods. Instead behavioural approaches are an additional dimension that should be considered as complement to existing programs.
• It must be acknowledged that effective as they are behavioural approaches will not overcome more serious limitations. To give an obvious example, if you physically lack the ability to do something priming won’t help you achieve it. Even if you are primed to write it will make no difference if you lack a pen. Therefore if you are considering a behavioural approach physical limitations that may prevent it being effective still need to be overcome, to enable changes to be made.
• For any behavioural approaches to be effective, the intended target needs to analysed. Different audiences are likely to respond to stimuli in different ways. For example in the trivial pursuit case study, games relied on stereotypes of certain groups, but it would seem likely that children will not necessarily be aware of the same stereotypes and implications.
• Audiences are not likely to be uniform either, so it should be considered how different segments of the audience are likely to react, and whether there will be a net gain. Knowing your audience and potential segments of your audience is also necessary to apply a behavioural approach.

Checklist for MyBnk trainers.

1. How might behaviours and mindsets be influenced in the session?
   1. What examples am I using?
   2. Who is passing on the information? (trainer, peer to peer, teacher / youth worker)
   3. How am I portraying norms?
   4. How can I use incentives effectively?
   5. Can I get participants to make public promises?
   6. Can I prime participants about how they interact in the session?
   7. What are the emotional connections to the content of the session?
   8. Is there a benefit to boosting participant(s) ego around managing their money?
2. What limitations might prevent success? Are the kids too hot to focus? Do they have the right materials?
3. Who are my audience? Can I tailor my program to their needs? Do they have any segments which might react differently?
4. Did it work? How can I check that it did? How could I do it differently next time?

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