This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
PUBLIC HEALTH


A NUDGE in the right direction


ukactive’s ‘Turning the Tide on Obesity’ campaign is the latest to rely on nudging – but what is nudging and does it work? Tom Walker explores


W


e know that, in retail, loyalty scheme customers can be convinced to change their behaviour for £33,” says Sir Keith Mills, founder of two such schemes: Air Miles and the Nectar card.


“Incentivising change is possible, but people need to feel there’s a clear benefit from changing their habits.” Mills, the former deputy chair of LOCOG, made his


comments at last November’s ukactive summit, where instigating a change in people’s behaviour was very much on the agenda. At the summit, ukactive announced a new collective ambition for the UK’s active leisure sector: to reduce inactivity levels by 1 per cent year-on-year for the next fi ve years.


Giving a nudge As there are no laws against inactivity, to achieve this ambitious target ukactive and its partners will have to rely on what Mills would call ‘nudging’ to change people’s habits. Nudging is a concept used in behavioural science, political theory and economics. The theory is based on the notion that positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions, which attempt to achieve non-forced compliance, can influence the motives, incentives and decision-making of groups and individuals more effectively than direct instruction, legislation or enforcement.


A book published in 2008 by American economists Richard


H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein brought nudging into the general public’s consciousness. Simply entitled Nudge, the book draws on research in psychology and behavioural economics and defends the active engineering of the way people’s decisions can/may be influenced. While nudging has, arguably, always existed in some form, Thaler and Sunstein’s book was seen as groundbreaking in the depth of detail it offered on how nudging works and how it can be used. There have been many examples of nudging successfully


affecting people’s behaviour across a wide range of topics. One of these was the UK government’s efforts to entice households to invest in loft insulation to conserve energy. Despite large government subsidies, the initial uptake of the scheme was extremely slow. Research to find out why people weren’t interested –


despite it saving them money in the long run – returned a simple but rather unexpected answer. The hassle of clearing out an attic before it could be insulated was putting people off. To tackle this, a ‘nudge’ was created: from September 2011, insulation firms began offering to clear loft spaces and dispose of any unwanted junk. Within weeks, the uptake increased threefold, even though there was an additional cost.


Five-a-Day has successfully ‘nudged’ people to increase their fruit and vegetable intake


Target practice There’s a rich history of nudge-based health campaigns too. In 1991, the US National Cancer Institute joined forces with the Produce for Better Health Foundation to launch the ‘National Five-a-Day for Better Health’ campaign. Over the past 20 years, this Five-a-Day programme – which encourages people to eat more fruit and veg – has spread from a California-based scheme to become the world’s largest public-private nutrition education initiative. More recently in Boston, US, two


Over 20 years, ‘Five-a-Day’ has grown from a California-based scheme to become the world’s largest private-public nutrition education initiative


44 Read Health Club Management online at healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital


Harvard students – Yifan Zhang and Geoff Oberhofer – came up with a fitness concept reliant entirely on behavioural economics. The duo were conducting research on how financial incentives can influence behaviour, when they realised their work had applications outside the classroom. The research was turned into a real-world business plan and as a result the pair launched GymPact in January 2012 (now known as Pact – see also p50). The service offers ‘motivational fees’ – customers agree to pay more if they miss their workouts at the gym.


April 2014 © Cybertrek 2014


PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/L I G H T P O E T


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92