Where to start nudging in your organization

You have read all the popular books on nudging, maybe even taken a course on the subject and can recite ten examples of successful nudges. You are ready to get serious about applying nudging in your workplace. But how do you know where to start? There are so many challenges. How do you know which nudge will make a great case study for your organization?

This is a question we often get asked at Impactually. There might be so many behaviors we want to change, that our choice aversion kicks in and leads to inertia, and nudging interventions never get started.

We decided to write a little guide to help you identify a situation that could be a good start and is more likely than others to lead to an impressive result that will make the rest of your organization take notice and increase the popularity of nudging and evidence-based decision making.

Last week I was at The Swedish Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten) to discuss this question with them. So let’s demonstrate this on a public health challenge. Let’s say our goal would be to reduce teenage pregnancies. Keep in mind that this is an illustrative example I came up with and does not represent an actual project of Folkhälsomyndigheten.

The prerequisites

First, we need to make sure that the right information about contraception is easily and publicly accessible. Check!

Second, we want to make sure that contraception is available and affordable to teenagers. Check!

Third, we need to know that teenagers would like to prevent these pregnancies and that becoming pregnant at a young age is not a rational choice. Check!

Even if the knowledge about birth control is good and access to contraception is available, many teenagers end up with unwanted pregnancies.

A perfect setting to use behavioral science!

Brainstorming different behaviors

Nudging is a tool to influence decision making, so to understand where nudging could be useful in the challenge to reduce teenage pregnancies, we need to list all choices that are relevant in this process. Some behaviors we might want to encourage and others we might want to discourage.

We could:

(1) …nudge teenagers to have less sex.

(2) …nudge them to use condoms during sex.

(3) …nudge them to remember to take their oral contraceptives.

(4) …nudge them to get an IUD (intrauterine device)

How do we decide which of these choices is the most promising to focus on? We will discuss them one by one explaining why one situation is better suited than another.

Where will a nudge be most effective

Nudging choice (1) to have less sex is certainly the least promising place to start. Nudging has been shown to be especially efficient (and ethical) in situations where individuals are close to indifferent between to options. Cookies or fruit as a snack? Whatever is presented in an easier to eat way. Ceramic cups or paper cups for your coffee in the office? Whatever is easier to reach. Vegetarian or meat at a conference? No preference for the majority. Having sex or abstaining? The “indifferent” group is most likely tiny. We are talking about teenagers, not couples that have been married for 10 years. Using a nudge to make it slightly less convenient to have sex is unlikely to stop the teenagers. Netflix Autoplay of the next “Game of Thrones” episode might nudge the adults to abstain.

So let’s think about choice (2). If we cannot nudge teenager to abstain from sex then maybe nudging them to use condoms is a better approach. Several years ago Dan Ariely and colleagues did a study on how arousal reduces our ability to make rational decisions. In an aroused state, subjects in an experiment stated that they would be more willing to engage in unsafe sex than in a neutral state.  So nudging in the moment seems promising as it is needed.

There might be several cognitive biases that could be at play here that we could try to overcome by nudging. First, in the heat of the moment, teenagers might not think about condoms until it is too late (inattention). Second, social norms might make use of condoms seem less desirable (social norms). Third, they might believe that they are less likely to get pregnant from unprotected sex than others (overconfidence). Once we have identified a couple of cognitive barriers to condom use, we might want to think about how to nudge the teenagers “in the heat of the moment”. This is difficult. How do you create the choice architecture for that moment? In our nudging courses, we tell our participants to write down as much as they can envision about the decision-making environment. This is easy when it comes to visualizing the office recycling bin or choosing a dish on the lunch menu in the canteen, but sexual activity is unlikely to always happen at the same place and under the same circumstances.

So while cognitively, teenagers might be receptive to a nudge in that moment, it will be challenging to build a functioning choice architecture around the decision since there are so many unknowns.

Moving on to choice (3), taking oral contraception every morning. Inattention is likely to be a problem when it comes to taking oral contraception every day. However, the individual is not in a “hot” state, and the decision environment is likely to be more predictable. Having the pills on the bedside table as a visual reminder, or setting the alarm on the phone as a reminder can increase adherence. Nevertheless, the individual needs to be nudged continuously, every day, to make sure that she remembers to take the pills. A single day of inattention can be problematic. Even if taking the pill is a habit that does not require a lot of conscious thought, a vacation or an overheard alarm clock can create a problem.

So let us look at choice (4). Getting an IUD is a decision that only needs to be taken every couple of years. Once it is implemented, no additional decisions need to be made and inattention, social norms, arousal, etc. will not matter. It is also very clear where a nudge could be implemented. Signing up for a doctor’s appointment to inform yourself and when making a decision on a contraceptive method. Another benefit is for this setting we could obtain perfect data on the decisions which allow for precise measurement of whether the nudge had any effect.

It is maybe not surprising that some of the most prominent and effective nudges fall into the same category as choice (4). Signing up to “Save more tomorrow” which once signed-up automatically increases your savings over time, being nudged into a better pension plan or to become an organ donor are one-time decisions that have long-term consequences. Deciding to wash your hands once, however, does not have long-term consequences and needs to be decided again and again several times a day. Also, it is difficult to measure directly.

So if you need to pick just one setting to build a first case study for your organization, try to find a one-time “opt-in/ opt-out” decision with long-term consequences for which you can easily measure the effect. Good luck!

Want to hear us talk more about how to use nudging in your organization? Check out the preview of our online course “Get behavioral science to work for you”, at the bottom of the course page.

You can also download our free and easy-to-use Introductory Guide, which introduces the foundations of the field for people who want to work with behavioral science and nudging in practice.

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Christina Gravert

christina.gravert@impactually.se

+46 76 070 33 89

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