Alice Yamabe: 0:01

Welcome to about sustainability, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental strategies, or itis. I'm Alice Yamabe, and in this episode, my co host Dwayne Appleby and I, we're joined by Philip Bujold, Senior behavioral scientist at rare center for behavior and the environment. This episode is the first in a three part series exploring how behavioral science can help us tackle some of today's most urgent environmental challenges. We discussed what behavioral science is, where it comes from, and how organizations like rare are applying behavioral insights to real world issues like plastic pollution, climate change and conservation, we explore key concepts such as nudges, sludges and behavioral levers. We began by asking Philippe to tell us what behavioral science actually is,

Philipe Bujold: 0:54

essentially any field that is studying human decision making, human action and the different variables that influence the actions that people take. So nowadays that means sociology, social psychology, economics, neuroscience, anthropology, but in the olden days, really not that long ago, actually 30-40, years ago, that mostly meant economics. And the reason I bring this up is because that is actually what has shaped many of these strategies that we still use today for behavior change. So in traditional economic theory, essentially people's choices were governed by the costs and benefits of our actions. And so the assumption was that human beings in general were essentially maximizing the benefits of their decisions and minimizing the costs, and that anything that didn't align with that was considered irrational. And so that meant that we had very specific tools to change behavior. We could use material incentives like fines or bonuses, so essentially paying people to adopt specific behaviors. We could introduce rules and regulations. So mandates really designed to kind of stop people from doing certain things or enable people from doing certain things. Or we could use information, and that was a typical tool, because us as environmentalists cared about specific things, and so we assumed that if we gave people information about these things, they would also care and change their behavior. What we now know today is that economic theory is not the be all and end all of human decision making, and we've really incorporated a lot of different theories, a lot of different findings from other fields into what is called behavioral science. So starting in the 50s, when we started really acknowledging the fact that our brain is not infinite. It doesn't have infinite capacity, we have limits on our cognition, and that really governs a lot of thinking in behavioral science is what we call bounded rationality. So we are rational within limits, within our biological limits, really. Then in the 70s, we have people like Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who really started challenging a lot of the assumptions that were present in economic theories. So looking at things like how gains versus losses are perceived, how people might not weigh probabilities and uncertainty equally, and that was very, very important. And then it's the 90s, we see a few findings, but it's not until 2008 really, where the book nudge was published, that really this new way of thinking about decision making kind of enters the mainstream. So nudge was all about how we can change little contextual things in the environments that people live in that really govern our choices, and so we're able to essentially influence people's choices unconsciously. And that was very, very important, because it then led and paved the way, really, to what we call nudge units, or behavioral science units and government, which, fast forward 10 years, are now present in almost every aspect of government and every aspect of life, at least in Western countries. So what we mean today by behavioral science is essentially a much broader tool set than kind of the pay them, stop them, tell them from before. And the main insights, really, that I think are important, really, for the listeners today, is that what behavioral science says these days is that, yes, material incentives, rules and information are all important, but also context matters. So the way that choices are presented to people, the way that we direct people's attention, really matters for influencing decision making. We are social animals, so that means that highlight. Existing or changing social norms is also very important, even though economics would unfortunately argue that probably what we see other people doing or what we think other people think of us shouldn't influence decision making. It really does. So that's an important aspect of it. And then the final insight that kind of rounds it all off, is that emotions are often much more powerful than reason, than those material incentives, than the rules and regulations, than the information. The way we feel really matters when we're making decisions. And so modern decision science, or modern behavioral science, really incorporates all of these insights and kind of puts them together into different frameworks that we're able to use.

Alice Yamabe: 5:47

Could you share some concrete examples of how behavioral insights are being applied in practice, perhaps across different fields, behavioral science,

Philipe Bujold: 5:56

although kind of applied behavioral science, I would say, really entered the fray and kind of the the mainstream in the 2010s it really did so initially around kind of finance and public health. So those two fields are really the ones, kind of at the forefront of applying behavioral science and about thinking about how people actually make decisions. How could reframe interventions, different policies there, they're really leading the pack. Then you'll have public health popping up development and actually, environment is kind of at the tail end of this. We're lagging behind quite a bit. Climate change has done incredible work looking at all the different levers that are influencing human decision making, beyond just economic decision making, but things like conservation, plastic reduction, we're still way behind what other fields are doing. So we're still relying mostly on the theories of the past, such as economic incentives, so religious markets. And there is also this

Alice Yamabe: 7:58

And could you also walk us through how rare came to integrate behavioral science into its work. other theory that I would say kind of plagues us

Philipe Bujold: 8:04

Yeah, so rare has been around for 40 to 50 years now, and we primarily were a social marketing organization. unfortunately, and I think that's because we're all kind of So we used to work on species conservation, doing what was called pride campaigns at the time, which was really to help experts in different topics, and that's information deficit facilitate pride of communities in conserving specific species. So we'd work with getting people to recognize and be prideful theory, which really relates to the idea that all of us are in about conserving a specific parrot or tigers and things like that. And they did that for around 40 years, and then in this field because we care about specific things, right? So, 2017 they started looking at the broader field of applied behavioral science that was growing talking with other, what conservationists, environmentalists, we are we call nudge units, or different behavior change organizations, and they really decided to bring that rigor of interested in these topics, and we do our job best when we get applied behavioral science to the rest of the organization. So they founded the Center for behavior in the environment, more information. And for some reason, because that's how we do which is the unit, or the internal Think Tank, if you want that I'm nestled in. And our role is to really bring evidence our work, we also assume that a lot of behavior change is based behavior change or applied behavioral science evidence to the work that rare does, and to anyone who wants to work with us inherently a lack of information. So in conservation, on different projects. And we do this by both bringing our own framework and so behavior centered design to the work that in environmental work, there is still kind of a focus on either we do, which is essentially a design process that lets you leverage insights from behavioral science through providing more information to people, which we now know isn't different steps in designing an intervention, and also through our own methodology, methodological or analytical always a solution to behavior change, either market incentives frameworks. So we have the behavioral Levers framework, which essentially defines six buckets or types of interventions that you can think of and that you should think of more like we used to do, but very little in terms of looking when you're designing the program, a behavior intervention, a policy for changing behaviors. So a way to at all the different drivers of behavior that we should be simplify all the insights that are coming out of behavioral economics, social psychology, sociology, neuroscience, etc. So looking at like other fields are doing. we have those two frameworks, and now we apply them to. Environmental issues around the world. So we have three internal programs. One is in agriculture, one is in fisheries, and the other one is really looking broadly at carbon emissions.

Dwayne Appleby: 10:11

I have a bit of a follow up question that we've mentioned the book nudge. It's very highly influential. I recall, you know, myself, you know, in university, encountering, you know, this book, and really, you know, setting political science, and thinking, wow, this is, this is really a game changer in a lot of ways. And I wonder, looking from the environmental perspective now and in the context of the work that rare does, is there a, is there a distinction between what we would call kind of nudge theory, or what has become known as nudge theory based on, you know, the concepts kind of encapsulated in that book, and the work that rare does is, is usually, you mentioned a number of different kind of levers of of behavior change. And I wonder how, how how the two kind of models overlap.

Philipe Bujold: 11:04

Yeah, so nudge really became quite famous because it was really challenging kind of the establishment at the time that really relied on, like I said, market incentives and information. And what nudge was saying is essentially that small changes in our decision context. So in the environment that governs our choices, can have markedly different effects on people's choices in the end. So I was talking earlier about taxes versus rebates, the outcome could be the same, depending on how you position it. You could say you either pay a 10 cents bag tax or you get a 10 cents rebate if you bring your own bag, right, the outcome would be the exact same, but just that tiny change in framing changes behavior quite a bit, and that's really what nudge was about. It was showing economists, politicians, policymakers, that, hey, not everything actually has to fit into this more, I guess, explicit bubble of levers that people used to think about. So we had material incentives or economic incentives. We had rules in the past, and we had information that we could very directly think about. But then what nudge did was open up this whole door of more implicit levers, or levers that are not directly observable in people's minds. And that opened the whole door to other fields that were looking at the role of, for example, emotions, of social norms, of, in this case, nudge, we call this choice architecture, so the way that we design the choice environment for people and all of these things really, really matter for decision making also. So that kind of opened up the whole spectrum of different tools that we have to help influence people's decisions. So at rare for example, we have our own Toolkit, which really describes kind of most of the tools in the behavioral sciences. And we split them up into six categories. So we'll have material incentives, which are kind of the more traditional costs and benefits that taxes would would impose, or different fees or bonuses. Then we'll have rules and regulations which are typically more policy oriented. So the different things that governments will enforce, we have information which is still very relevant. So these three things are the traditional levers that we think about, but then we have more behaviorally informed levers, which are then these emotional influences. So thinking about how you frame a message, what emotions it will convey how people will feel about specific things. We have social norms. So what people are seeing other people do, or what other people think we should be doing are very important, and so we have this as a separate lever. And the final one is choice architecture, and that really relates to that nudge specifically. So nudge is very important, but there's so much more now in the behavioral science toolkit. So it's kind of opened the eyes of everyone, but in doing so, we've now integrated so many more levers from different fields that Behavioral Sciences has gone way past just behavioral economics and what it was in the 70s or 90s.

Dwayne Appleby: 14:17

To what extent are there different strategies to approach I guess you could say different different levels of decisions, or different entry points. So you can think of, you know, there are certainly collective challenges, right? You know, collective environmental challenges, you know, in thinking of plastic in a Riverway. But there's also, you know, individual, household level things or institutional levels, I wonder if there's, if there's a difference in in the way we approach that, in the different combinations of levers that might might work well, or even just what we know about how people respond to these types of interventions.

Philipe Bujold: 14:58

Yeah. So the unfortunate. Reality is, I can't give you a clean cut answer to that question, because really, context will be the main deciding factor for a lot of these these challenges that we're addressing, and context can be the level of influence we're looking at. So are we working with individuals? Are we working with communities? Are we working with institutions, or are we thinking more at a systems level? So that's one way to think about it, but also the context of the decision itself. What kind of decision is it? How is it being driven? What are the different factors that are coming into play, and so on that that later note, I think one thing that is still quite fascinating, and that I love in this part of the work is that you do see buckets of challenges kind of emerging over time and repeating over and over. So environmental challenges are very different and very quite strongly, really, across different contexts. But the types of decisions that we're asking people to do are also quite similar across the different contexts. And so, for example, just kind of three main buckets that we tend to see. The first one will be really decisions that are more based out of habits or that are not really highly consequential for the individual at the time where they're making that decision. So you can think of like choosing a plastic bag over reusable alternative for us in the moment, it doesn't have that much impact, and it's something we really do out of routine, out of habit, but that's kind of one big bucket of things that we tend to see. Relates to diet, choice, it relates to plastics, it relates to a whole host of different situations, and there are specific ways of tackling this also, the second one that we see is often kind of the opposite of this one. It's high consequence, uncertain behavior, so things that people don't do often and that are kind of really surrounded by a lot of risk and uncertainty, very often tied to kind of their livelihoods or big financial decisions. So one good example of that is we do a lot of work with farmers in Latin America, and a lot of the choices there are about going from kind of this old intensive agriculture model to more regenerative style agriculture, and that requires a lot of new different practices, and it's very risky, because they have experience with the old practices, but not the new. They don't know exactly what to expect, and kind of information alone isn't going to help with that. So that's the second bucket, and we see that with a lot of things, either people adopting solar panels or electric vehicles adapting new practices. So really, that second bucket there, and then the last one that we tend to see quite a bit in conservation actually, is all about these issues that really require everyone to cooperate for it to make sense, kind of financially and rationally. So you can think of these collective dilemmas cooperation dilemmas, collective action dilemmas, we call them in the field, that really come into play here so rare does a lot of work here with fisheries in the Global South, and we'll be working with different fishing communities to kind of help create reserves in their local fisheries area. Unfortunately, that can be a great solution if everyone participates. But if you're creating a reserve and only a few fishers are actually following the rules and the others are not, everyone kind of loses out in the end. And so you really need everyone to be participating for the solution to make sense for everyone. And that would really be the third bucket. So yeah, these decisions where, unless you get everyone or kind of a significant amount of a community, an institution or a system to participate, then your solution just does not make sense. Whereas in the two others, your solution still makes sense, even if you're the only one adopting it, it's just that there's other barriers that are coming into play.

Alice Yamabe: 19:01

Can you tell us more about how you decide where is the most effective like, what type of decision will have the most effect in terms of protecting the environment or mitigating climate, what will be easiest to do, and how do you tailor your approaches to each type of decision.

Philipe Bujold: 19:22

The good news on that front is that since we're behavioral scientists, our expertise is on behavior, not necessarily on the impacts of all of these behaviors. And the reason I say it's the good news is because you're not putting all of your eggs in one basket. There's not one person that is actually having to have the expertise on everything. And so for a lot of our projects, we're actually working with ecologists. We'll be working with different natural scientists, essentially that are the experts on what are the best practices that people should be adopting. They'll be consulting with local communities on what the local communities want to be doing, and they'll be selecting essentially, what is that new behavior that new children. Is that new practice that people should be adopting? And that's when behavioral scientists most likely will come in. That's when we at rare will usually come in, and it's really once a behavior has been selected. How do we then make sense of it? How do we ensure that people are willing to do it? How do you encourage people to do it? And that's when our expertise will come into play. So we have a set of people that will be working with the communities, who are the experts, really in their area, and also academic experts more on kind of the natural science side of things that will help pick those practices. Usually, we'll work also with policymakers, what makes the most sense, and then we'll come in, once that has been selected, to really understand kind of, what are all the different motivations, motivators and barriers for a specific choice in that context? So everyone has a role to play, and really that that's how we're able to maximize kind of everyone's potential, at least within the organization. I'm wondering, if you know, given that context of thinking about how we,

Dwayne Appleby: 21:01

you know, how we best approach this challenge, whichever it happens to be, in a different sector. But I wonder if there are some other examples of perhaps successful interventions, perhaps challenging interventions, that you could share, that are from, you know, a variety of sectors. You know, of course, biodiversity, but maybe you know, urban spaces, challenges that are unique to cities, or kind of issues of consumption and production, whether that's, you know, a business side or individual waste management. Yeah, if you just have any any examples you could share.

Philipe Bujold: 21:35

If we look more at kind of infrastructure and the design of cities, one thing that comes up a lot is really, how can we leverage that infrastructure to help influence kind of the choice architecture of other people's different choices, right? And when it comes to plastic waste, just waste in general, there's actually quite a lot of work being done on that, because as much as we would love information and again, finds to change behavior when it comes to plastic and waste. Actually, a lot of choice, architecture, emotion, social norms are going to be the solution to most of our problems. And so really interesting intervention that was done actually, in Copenhagen was looking at, how can we guide people towards existing infrastructure in a way that kind of just fits into their existing habits, as opposed to having to create a whole new set of behaviors. And it's going to sound overly simplistic, but it had a great effect, and they just put little green footsteps on the pavement that guided people from kind of high waste consumption areas to where they could dispose of the waste. So literally, green little footsteps that led people to bins and that had a massive effect on reducing the amount of littering in the cities. And there's tons of different interventions that actually rely on choice architecture, but have the most effect using kind of these habitual processes. Another way that different groups different governments can actually influence behavior quite significantly is through what we call significantly is through what we call defaults, so changing kind of the status quo behavior, or what is typically recommended, what is the path of least resistance for behavior. And a great example of this would be when people are signing up for different kind of electricity providers. Some countries, Switzerland piloted this actually, where they're trying to set the default to the most environmentally friendly electricity price. So when you're looking for different electricity plans with a provider, and you'll have 345, different options. And if you think of it as like an online form, online you have different boxes. Well, one of them will be pre selected, usually the most environmentally friendly, and that's enough to actually influence a lot of people to stick with that decision, because it aligns, essentially with people's intentions.

Dwayne Appleby: 23:51

If I can jump in quickly and just say that when you were mentioning, I think it was in Copenhagen, the kind of green feet on the ground, what immediately came to mind for me was what I've experienced in many retail locations, that companies, larger companies, use this to kind of guide you to where they want you to go inside their their store. And so I think it's interesting that they're, you know, the similar, similar methods are being used in one in one case, it's being used successfully to help us consume more, which may or may not be a good thing, probably a bad thing. But on the other hand, it's, you know, in Copenhagen, it's being used to help us to figure out how best to, you know, waste, segregate, dispose of our waste in a responsible way, help with closed loop efforts reduce plastic use and so on. It's, it's interesting to see how you know the kind of the same behavioral insight is put to use in different ways, you know, by different actors within the system.

Philipe Bujold: 24:58

Definitely, and actually, that that's something. In worth bringing up, a lot of the system like you're saying, is actually created already to kind of lead to more negative environmental outcomes, really so high consumers and behaviors and the systems are built for that, and so a lot of the work that behavioral scientists actually do in the environmental space is just kind of reducing the push that systems have towards unsustainable behaviors. Some of your listeners might have heard the term sludge before. If we think of nudges as essentially little changes to people's choice architecture, to the environment in which people make choices that will promote a behavior, a sludge is the opposite. So it's the way that the environment is created to dissuade a good behavior and probably promote kind of a high consumerism, less

Alice Yamabe: 26:25

I'm realizing as we talk that we're faced with environmentally friendly behavior. And actually, a lot of behavior change every day in our lives, but I'm wondering, do you the work that's being done institutionally with governments have any concrete example of a sludge that might have been removed from my everyday surroundings, and then I might is reducing the amount of sludge that is kind of leading us not have noticed, but actually is influencing me towards having a better behavior towards the environment and society in astray away from Pro Environmental behaviors. So general. You're in Australia, so maybe a sludge that was removed we're looking at the systems that already exist and trying to in Australia that people might not have noticed,

Philipe Bujold: 26:56

actually, Australia is leading the way on think, Okay, what is this system actually pushing people towards? a lot of they call these sludge audits, where they will be looking at whole departments in government and trying to see And instead of creating a whole new intervention, can we just where is their extra steps that people have to go through to access funding or access grants or access government help, and remove some barriers in this existing system to kind of trying to remove these so all of these little points of added piggyback on those more implicit processes going on in our heads friction we call So there's a lot of work trying to remove that. A lot of digitization work by governments is trying to that we're maybe not aware of, but that are still influencing actually get to that. So how could you remove as many steps as possible to simplify systems, to get people where they want to our behavior quite significantly. be quicker? One of the biggest environmental examples I could give you is it used to be very, very hard in many countries to kind of switch to solar power on your house. You needed to go through loops and then different regulations with governments. And a lot of governments are actually trying to simplify that, to get people to be able to switch to solar quicker, to connect to the grid quicker when they want to switch to renewable electricity. So these are some of the examples of sludge being removed, but there's all sorts of different examples of sludge. Sludge isn't just friction. It could be kind of any bad eco information. So we're faced with eco labels all the time. A lot of them are confusing. A sludge audit might help you kind of consolidate these and make sure that they're very clear. It could be about unnecessary delays. It could be about disinformation campaigns trying to reduce the amount of disinformation. We can probably see that there's not a lot of sludge auditing being done on social media these days, but there used to be a lot more. And yeah, the rest of kind of these sludge removal programs are really about the friction in systems infrastructure that's kind of lagging behind things like this.

Alice Yamabe: 28:51

And how do you decide that a target behavior is actually well fitted for everyone? For example, you were mentioning digitization, and I'm seeing that this is something that they're trying to implement in Japan. But then elderly people might not be as ready to have that change happen in their lives, maybe sometimes at the individual level, it's not that easy than just implementing like a quick system change. So I feel like this is a huge wall that we're faced with when we're dealing with behavior change, because people are not ready to change their habits, or they're not ready to invest into maybe like solar panels, or they feel like this is a huge investment.

Philipe Bujold: 29:34

It kind of goes back to those three main buckets of types of decisions that we were talking about earlier. So depending on what you're trying to change, you'll want to use very different strategies, or what we call levers, to change those behaviors. So let's say you're talking about digitization in Japan. In this case, what is that digitization affecting? What kind of habits is it changing, and is it kind of feeding into the way that people were. Already doing their behaviors? Is it something new entirely? Is it something that people have to do a lot of the time when you're doing a kind of a behavioral audit, or going through this design process, trying to think of an intervention to encourage a new behavior? These are all different things you'll be looking at. So who are your different audiences? What are they currently doing? What are the audiences that are probably fine without an extra intervention? What are the ones that you will need extra intervention with all these different things? And I have to say a lot of the time, quite controversially, if people are not adopting a new behavior, it might just not make sense, and that's something that we do tend to still forget. Even with behavior change, we think, oh, we'll be able to use emotions, social influences or nudges to kind of fix the behavior. But if it doesn't make sense rationally, in the same ways that we used to quantify behavior. So does it make sense economically? Do people have all the information that they need to do it and kind of, does it align with existing rules? It will still fail. So you really need to be looking at the entire, the entirety of the barriers and motivators that are affecting kind of someone when they're looking at changing their behavior. So you said maybe a lot of the time we don't know if a behavior change makes sense. How do you know, before you scale, how do you know at the design when you're designing the intervention, that this will be an actual behavior that will make sense for most people? So that would be part of the design process. So let's say we're I'll take the example of fish Revver. So fish Revver is one of various internal programs that works on fisheries, and we're in eight, almost 12 countries now, and the main behaviors that they'll be promoting are different based on the context, but they all relate to helping fisheries kind of manage their own local waters. So helping people set up managed access areas where only local fishers are allowed to fish, and then set up reserves where fish for fish populations would essentially bounce back from and that is kind of the natural science solution to a lot of things. But then when we're actually looking at the system, we need to think, Okay, well, will a reserve make sense for people? Is this something that their livelihood can sustain? Can they actually stop fishing in certain areas? Can they not what are the other things that we need to introduce into the system for all this to make sense? Because if you just create a park on paper, it's a problem that might not be enforceable, that people might not follow. So which fish forever, for example, will help communities create these reserves. But then we also have a whole different side, helping people set up, essentially banking co ops, so that they can kind of Wither the storm of that initial drop in fisheries set up by the reserve so they'll be able to save and have that money accrue on the side, if times do get tough because of the reserve, But then over time, as the reserve kind of starts giving off its benefits, and more and more Fisher in the area and fishers are actually able to benefit from it, we've been able to essentially, kind of bridge that time gap. So even though the behavior didn't make sense at the beginning, we've also looked at what are the other things that we can do in the system to make everything make sense at the end. And that's one thing that a lot of different programs are actually doing. They'll be looking at, okay, what are the other levers, the other things that we need to take into account, and that's where theories of change come into play for programs. So what are all the different things we need to put into place to get that final outcome? And we're only talking about behavior here, but there's a lot of different things that will come into play also for that to happen.

Alice Yamabe: 33:44

Can you just tell us a bit more about what is a theory of change? Because I feel like this is a bit obscure

Philipe: 33:50

as part of the rare design process called behavior centered design, one of our main outcomes will essentially be a theory of change, or you create a program with a key environmental outcome. In this case, you have defined the behaviors that you need to achieve to hit that outcome, but you'll also be thinking about, what are those psychological, those social, those systematic things that have to change those barriers and motivators for behavior to then lead to that behavior, to lead to that outcome, and then you'll create interventions that will feed into this. And so it's a different way of thinking about interventions where most people will usually think, okay, we want to achieve that outcome. Let's think about a information campaign or a social marketing campaign. We really work backwards through things and create a theory of change. So it's a causal pathway. If you want a hypothesis that's set on paper, and you can actually validate it. So did your intervention actually lead to that change that you think is necessary to lead to behavior change which will lead to your outcome? And each step is actually something you can test and you can look at and make sure it has succeeded and is proving true. So. And so that's what we mean by a theory of change, and it is usually the outcome of most design processes that are being used in behavioral science, but it is often something that we see lacking actually, when you're looking at different programs doing behavior change, because they don't have that clear chain. And so when things don't work out, they don't know exactly why, and they're not able to diagnose why something might have gone wrong.

Dwayne Appleby: 35:23

So you outlined this theory of change that kind of walks us through, from, you know, stating the objective, and then, you know, the behaviors that will help achieve that objective, and then going a step back and saying, What are these, you know, psychological or psychosocial states that are required to bring about those behaviors and so on and so forth. And it's really interesting from from, I guess, the the project management perspective, that quite often when we look at monitoring and evaluation, we almost look at it in the opposite direction, you know. And so it's a really interesting exercise for for practitioners to sit down and and think about it and come from this different perspective. And so I wonder if there's anything you can say about the value of taking this perspective, what's the like? What's the value add for for a project developer or an implementer, community organizer, local government, what have you

Philipe Bujold: 36:27

definitely so I'd say in environmental work, actually, probably one of the biggest shifts that behavioral science is having is kind of that reframing of thinking through programs. Because, yes, there are a lot of theories on behavior change and actually conservation climate change, we have been good at looking at a broad base of theories for the last 1020 years. What behavioral science is helping is putting everything into a framework that you can use to kind of think through systematically. And so these theories of change are one example of that, and they're also a good example to think through how we're deploying our programs to make sure that we're doing it conscientiously. So when you're actually apply applying intervention, we want to make sure that intervention is leading to a specific psychosocial state change that leads to specific behavior change that leads to a specific outcome. And in a way, it actually reframes the entire way that we do approach program design, because you're not actually building from the intervention. You're building from the outcome and going backwards. But it also opens up the whole door to different ways of funding these interventions, or essentially validating our interventions. So whereas a lot of environmental work used to be about okay, we've pitched that we're going to be doing 15 social marketing campaigns, or we're going to hit 200,000 likes on Facebook, something like this. Now we can actually try and pitch these psychosocial state changes. So these changes in psychological, social or kind of structural variables. So instead of saying, Okay, we're doing X amount of social marketing campaigns, we can start thinking it in the sense of okay, have we actually changed social norms or perceptions of social norms for people? And so you don't have to do 10 social marketing campaigns. You can do eight, if you only need eight for a majority of people to think that most people are doing your target behavior. Or you might need to do 12. And that's okay, because you're actually tied to your kind of psychological indicator, as opposed to your monitoring indicator, which is usually how we think of program design.

Dwayne Appleby: 38:28

Well, I wonder, then I mean thinking about that in terms of, as you said, you know, you can, you can set these, these parameters, and then check on your success, you know, and you think about reporting to if it's funders or its government, or government is implementing a program on their own, and they need to be accountable to the taxpayer, you know. How does this type of framework lend itself to to that monitoring and evaluation aspect? Like, can it be? Is it is it, you know, very qualitative. Is it quantitative? Is there something that can be said about about the rigor of being able to capture the results of behavior change intervention?

Philipe Bujold: 39:14

Yeah, so behavioral science, for better, for worse, actually typically requires both qualitative and quantitative work. So you'll need a lot of qualitative work to understand the specifics of the context you're working in, because obviously, behavior is messy. People are messy. You want to understand the complete context in which a behavior is taking place to be able to best deliver kind of your recommendations and the insights that you have to share. So a lot of qualitative work goes into play. A lot of quantitative work also goes into this to try and quantify essentially those insights. So if you think a lot of people are perceiving that the norm is not a line, you still want to be able to quantify this and understand how many people are actually thinking this. And that's very important in the initial design bit. But it then is also extremely important at the end, and that's another thing that applied behavioral science really kind of brings to the field. It's this mindset of evaluation, because it comes from all of these old academic fields that we're very focused on measuring change. So changing one variable and kind of testing in an experimental setting, what will the outcome of that be? And so a lot of these new frameworks of Applied Behavioral Science actually bring this into the real world. So we'll be using a lot of qualitative quantitative insights to be creating our interventions. But then we need quantitative and qualitative data to actually be able to do what we call causal inference, or essentially understand the impact of our work, see if it has worked, if it hasn't worked, and actually do proper evaluation of this in a more rigorous way than what has traditionally been done, especially in environmental work. Very often we tend to just look at what was there before and what was there after, but so many things change over time. Just think of how our perception of climate change has changed in the last 510 years, and that's usually the length of a program. So unless you're doing rigorous evaluation, you don't know is the change you're seeing because of the work you're doing or just because society is changing? And that's one of the things that applied behavioral science is bringing it's this mindset of experimentation, of properly evaluating programs to really understand is the outcome that you're seeing because of the behavior you've changed, because of these psychological, social or structural states that you've changed because of your intervention. And that is really the chain that wasn't there before that, I think, has been the biggest revolution in Applied Behavioral Science for environmental work.

Dwayne Appleby: 41:42

So maybe we could, you know, turn to considering behaviorally informed policy. And I wonder, to what extent do you see that so far as as as a success? Is it gaining momentum? Are there particular challenges? I think we've often seen that many policies, especially at the national level, tend to be very top down, whereas at the local level, they might be bottom up. So I mean, there are different different approaches and strategies here, but in general, what's your take on behaviorally informed policy?

Philipe Bujold: 42:18

At the moment, essentially the beginnings of kind of Applied Behavioral Science was in government, and it was to inform policy. So actually there is great behavioral public policy being done out there, and there are behavioral scientists being put at all levels of government, in environmental work. A lot of the work is actually driven by NGOs. So that's why we talk less of policy work and more about programs or interventions, but behaviorally informed policy is essentially just another entrance point, if you want, in the way we can change behavior so behavioral public policy can still utilize those levers I was talking about earlier, of emotions, social norms, choice architecture, and they do. There's a lot of work being done on choice architecture at the level of public policy that kind of then shapes the entire system. So it's not a matter of one or the other. I think because of the way we are siloed in our own organizations, we might think of it as different aspects of behavior change, but really, policy is just another name for behavior change, kind of at the systems level. And I think that is one mistake that a lot of us make, is that we think behavior changes with the individuals or communities, and then policy is a separate other thing. But it's not a mistake that is done across the space in Applied Behavioral Science. I think that is actually something that we do need to fix in the environmental space where policy is not dissociated from behavioral science. Behavioral Science can enrich policy and vice versa. And I wonder, is there just thinking about, you know, as we were talking about behavioral sciences and designing interventions programs and the need to really make them context specific, audience specific. When we're looking at policies that are being developed by different governments in different places, to what extent are those transferable? Are there?

Dwayne Appleby: 44:18

Are there kind of core components, things that we see like, I mean, we've mentioned plastic bag fees or something. These seem to pop up in many, many places across the region and globally. And so I wonder, are there other kind of key top level takeaways that that maybe you've seen for kind of success factors or or pain points?

Philipe Bujold: 44:42

Yeah. So if you think of behavioral science, kind of as a way to approach behavior change, or as a way to approach the interventions the policies would create, really all it is is a greater acknowledgement of all the different things that will influence behavior so as opposed to specific fields that will focus on. Just market incentives or just information things like that. What behavioral science tries to do is really look at the whole array of things that will essentially modify behavior over time. And there are some trends, but also each country, each context, will have their own way of looking at these different things, the different things that will be acceptable in that society versus the other. That being said, there are huge trends across the sector for what works and what doesn't work, because we are all human, and our brain, by and large, works the same. We have the same structures at the same places, and we have the same algorithms kind of shaping our behavior. So loss framing is always going to be quite effective across a wide array of issues. So not just with bag taxes, but it's done for a lot of other things. Defaults are very important. So one of the main examples of defaults is how a lot of countries switched to organ donations by default when you get your driver's license, versus having to opt in for it, which is a tiny amount of effort, but one that actually dissuades most of us to just clicking it. If it's by default, most of us don't opt out, but if we need to opt in, most of us don't do it. So that's another example that can be kind of applied across the board. And defaults are extremely powerful. Of all the choice architecture tools you have out there, defaults are typically among the most powerful ones. Social norms are also something that across the board is very, very effective. If you're able to have a policy that helps enforce specific messaging about how normal something is, how many people are doing something. If you're able to make behavior more observable, that is very powerful. So in the US, a great example is this project related to Opower, which is all about making more observable people's usage of electricity they deployed in a bunch of different communities across the country, and essentially what they did was, at the end of every month when people were getting their utility bills, they would also get a ranking of where they fit versus other people in terms of electricity usage. And that seems very simple, and it's something that can be deployed at a policy level, but it had massive impact on electricity usage. It's something that has been done, again for water, that is being trialed for a bunch of different behaviors, but essentially being able to compare yourself to others and have the idea that others might be able to see what you're doing really helps influence behavior, because we are social creatures, and a lot of what we do really depends on what we think other people are doing or what other people expect of us, and that's a very key tool that policymakers

Alice Yamabe: 47:50

use. So you said that we're all humans, and we might all react in similar ways, but I still feel like maybe some countries or some communities might react better to some levers, especially you mentioned social norms. I feel like this is probably even more powerful in Asian countries. I feel like in Japan, this is probably one of the most powerful levers. How do you assess the different cultures, the different contexts in which you're going to apply your intervention, and how? How can you sort of anticipate which approach will be most efficient depending on this context?

Philipe Bujold: 48:27

Yeah, so that will all be done in the initial research that we'll do. So when you're approaching a project, you obviously want to understand kind of what are the main driving forces in the specific community you're working with. And yes, like I said, we're all human, so we all follow the same principles. But what will really change things is the way that our upbringing, our society, our communities, kind of help us ascribe value to specific things or not to other things. So we can think of it as I don't love this dichotomy, but a lot of people use it where we're talking about collectivist countries versus individualistic countries, right? And there's a lot of debate around this, but essentially, if we just take the principle about what it means is that a lot of people in collectivist countries would react more strongly to kind of norm messaging, whereas that might be less relevant in individualistic countries. And if that's something that you're finding in a community where you're seeing that social norms seem to be a driving force here, then you want to probably leverage that in your behavior change intervention. If it's not something you're seeing in your initial research, then you wouldn't want to be essentially leveraging that. Maybe it was something else you can leverage. And so you can look at emotions. You can look at choice architecture. You can look at different incentives that might come into play instead. But that's essentially what your initial research would be telling you, and that's why you want to be following the design process that kind of works through each step you want to make sure you're not missing anything.

Alice Yamabe: 49:56

And what about the different types of messaging around approach?

Philipe Bujold: 50:00

So again, that will tend to depend on kind of, what is the behavior you're trying to change. What are the different drivers that are behind it when we think messaging, typically, what people mean is kind of emotional messaging, or the intent that you have with messages. And obviously, at a simplistic level, we can think of gains versus loss frames. So saying something will be positive versus something will be negative will have markedly different effects. But even just the emotions that we're using are a bit more intricate than that, and will have different effects. So having a message that's more about hope will have a different effect, a message that's about pride. So pride will tend to drive continued behavior. So if someone is already doing something well, they pride will tend to kind of keep that going, whereas hope wouldn't. For example, you can try to engender anger, you can try to engender interest. I think a lot of us try to avoid more negative emotions in our messaging, or more negative frames and seeming. Yeah, exactly, powerful, exact. But you need to know exactly why you're using it and when you use it. You need to be very accurate in your intent, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So there has been seemingly a ban on kind of using negative messaging, and I think that's because it might have overused it in a lot of context where it wasn't necessary, but if you're very full of intent, essentially with the emotions that you're trying to engender, then you're much more likely to succeed in your messaging.

Alice Yamabe: 51:38

Why is there a ban on using negative emotions, because I have seen so many messaging around like flight shaming, especially in Germany, a lot of shaming around certain types of diets, especially maybe more meat focused. Yeah, I understand it, but at the same time, I also get that it's not completely ethical, and I'm sort of having a hard time balancing. How much do we want to shame people, because we want them to get to a certain behavior and but maybe just encouraging them, or like, making them proud about having a certain behavior, is not enough, because they're sort of restrained by sort of a belonging, an identity that they've associated for so long with this type of behavior. So, yeah, how do you balance that?

Philipe Bujold: 52:24

Yeah, no, definitely. I think that's one of the main actually trade offs that kind of happens in environmental work, especially, and that's something that other applied behavioral science fields don't necessarily have, and that's because we have a odd dual mandate where, like, public health, is essentially trying to make people healthier, which is good for people, very often, we have a mandate to protect the environment, which doesn't always align with protecting people. It is a trade off that we have to find in the middle. And there is no right or wrong answer. However, there are things you can put in place to ensure that you're not doing unnecessarily harm to different communities, or that you're not kind of creating an environment of polarization. And so a lot of people are looking at co design approaches where you're really working with the communities that you are trying to influence, to think, okay, these are the different levers that we can be utilizing here. These are the different approaches that we might want to be looking at. Maybe it's social norms, maybe it's material incentives, maybe it is choice architecture or emotional messaging. But you really want to be working with the communities to understand, how would they perceive this? How is this going to actually influence behavior? Is that something that they want to be saying, is that something that they want to be doing? And I think that's more the answer than a blanket ban on yes or no, because the community might be completely fine with some of the issues, but again, no one will ever be 100% fine with either kind of we do everything or we do nothing. So it is always going to be a trade off, and that is the inherent kind of difficulty within environmental work. It is value based, and so it's just a matter of making sure that we are looking at the values of the people that are really the target of our interventions, as opposed to our own values as economists, environmentalists, the people who essentially will not be impacted by these interventions.

Dwayne Appleby: 54:27

So I'm wondering, I guess, for our listeners, if there's anyone listening who is interested in integrating some of the behavioral insights, lessons from behavioral sciences into their work, whether it's in, you know, conservation work we've talked a bit about today, if they're working on cities or climate mitigation, you know, what are some kind of takeaways that you'd like them to leave leave the podcast with today. And if there's any resources that you would want to point them to.

Philipe Bujold: 55:00

Words, yeah. So at the risk of over generalizing, given how you've described your listeners, I think most people listening right now would probably fit the category of someone who broadly changes behavior or helps on behavior change to some level. And so I think that automatically should mean that we need to be looking deeper at, what are the latest theories on behavior change? What does Applied Behavioral Science mean? How we can integrate that into our work to make sure that we are the most effective at changing behavior as we can and so that would be, I guess, the thesis here. But there are solutions. Don't worry. It's not just a problem. And there are resources everywhere these days, especially when you're looking at applying behavioral science in conservation. So rare is a great organization to start with. You can go to behavioral.rare.org which is our resource and community of practice, to get everyone kind of on board with what behavioral science means. But we're not the only ones. There's other organizations out there, there's traffic, there's a Nature Conservancy. You can look at the behavioral insights team. We're all on the same side here. We're all trying to do good and be more effective at behavior change, and do it in a way that respects the people we're working with. So I want to encourage everyone to doesn't matter who you're talking to, as long as you are doing it in a systematically rigorous way. So yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, always happy for them. I'm guessing you'll put my details somewhere that people can reach out to. But also go have a look at giver that red.org It's a great place to start.

Bob: 56:32

Thank you for listening to about sustainability. Please subscribe @podcast.iges.jp or search for about sustainability wherever you normally get your podcasts. If you've got feedback, you can review us on your podcast directory of choice, or reach out on Twitter at i, G, E, S, underscore, en. About sustainability is produced by the Institute for Global Environmental strategies. Any views expressed during the podcast are those of the speaker at the time of recording and do not necessarily reflect the views of IGES. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us. We don't take that lightly, and we hope you'll join us next time you you.