Abstract:

Changing individual behaviour is key to tackling issues such as obesity, poverty and climate change. Yet many behavioural interventions have recently been criticised: they often raise awareness or strengthen intentions, but show only small and short-lived effects on actual behaviour. This has led behavioral researchers to prioritize interventions that produce immediate, observable changes in behaviour (or ‘revealed preferences’), even when these effects are tiny.

However, some of the most important interventions may be those that do not primarily target immediate behaviour, but those that reshape the conditions under which future behaviours, norms, coalitions and policy demands emerge. They change what is seen as normal, legitimate, politically feasible or socially expected. In terms of complex dynamical systems, they alter the current “attractor landscape” and make later tipping points possible. For example, advertising bans may not instantly change behaviour, but they help to denormalise high-carbon consumption by undermining the social license of fossil-intensive lifestyles.

This perspective implies that behavioural interventions can be most impactful when they weaken forces that stabilise the status quo and strengthen the pull of alternative futures. Rather than searching for a single ‘silver bullet’, behavioural scientists and behavioral public policy may thus benefit from policy sequencing: using combinations of interventions that first destabilise existing patterns and then help tip the system into a new state (as in the ‘Zwarte Piet’ transition in the Netherlands). During this workshop, we explore how such policy sequencing influences the evaluation of behavioral interventions, and how it can be embedded more structurally in behavioral public policy.

Bio:

Sara Constantino is an assistant professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the interplay between individual, collective, institutional and ecological factors, including how they shape preferences, decisions, experiences and resilience to extreme events or shocks. In recent and ongoing studies, she is looking at the role of polarization, social norms and governance in stimulating or stifling climate action, including both adaptation and mitigation, and what conditions lead groups mobilize to shape policy and other outcomes. She also works on the impacts and politics of guaranteed income and other cash transfer programs.

This workshop is organized by UvA’s Impact Centre ‘Marketing Insights for Societal Transitions’ (MIST - https://abs.uva.nl/mist). It is open to academics but we especially welcome change agents, including communication specialists, NGOs, sustainability officers, marketeers and policymakers.

Information and registration:

If you are interested in joining this seminar, please register through the link. For general information, please send an email to the MIST Team at send an email to the secretariat of the Amsterdam Business School at mist-abs@uva.nl.