7 minute read
Majority understand the logic of trade-offs
22 Behaviour change
NEVER MIND NUDGE THEORY, THE MAJORITY UNDERSTAND THE LOGIC OF TRADE-OFFS
A survey conducted by Lucy Farrow and Tom Cohen exploring attitudes to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods revealed that most people are willing to accept slightly longer journey times in exchange for wider benefits
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Base: All respondents (n=2071).
Lucy Farrow Tom Cohen
Despite their seemingly benign nature, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are continuing to generate opposition, support and media coverage.
While it is tempting to laugh off incidents like the ‘vandalism’ of a planter closing a road in Oxford1 , this backlash sets a poor precedent for the other decarbonisation projects that will be needed to hit net zero targets.
If, as some commentators suggest, we’re reaching the limits of ‘stealth’ decarbonisation2 behind the scenes, then future interventions are going to be just as visible as LTNs. And they’ll need to confront the fact that high levels of concern about climate change aren’t translating into support for climate mitigation measures.
Since the introduction of the ‘Nudge Unit’ to policy making under former prime minister David Cameron, behavioural science has been used to effect behaviour change in a similarly ‘stealthy’ way.
Nudge theory says that if you can make the new behaviour easier, then people will make a change without really noticing, avoiding the need for an argument. But nudge has become something of a dirty word recently, with the Telegraph referring to as ‘weaponised psychology’ in the context of Covid-19 restrictions. And LTNs might be the classic example of a nudge failure: the change has been noticed, and now we’re starting the argument on the back foot.
But why is this argument still needed if, as the evidence shows, most people in the UK believe in and want to see action on climate change? Our recent UK-wide polling sheds some light on the disconnect. We find that, as expected, most people (75%) think petrol and diesel cars make a significant contribution to climate change globally. However, just 41% feel that their own driving plays a significant role. In fairness, one individual’s driving will contribute a tiny proportion of the total impact of fossil-fuel cars, so it’s not necessarily inaccurate to answer yes to the first question and no to the second. But the questions were teasing at the fact that the total impact arises from the actions of a large number of individuals. It recalls the Sorites paradox: each additional grain may not cause there to be a pile but the pile is unarguably there!
And, if people genuinely aren’t connecting actions at a local level to the bigger picture, then it’s not surprising that they don’t accept the trade-off of longer journey times, even if they do value action on climate change highly. Thinking about your immediate neighbourhood, we’d like to know whether you’d be prepared to accept an increase in everyday journey times for drivers e.g. journeys to work, school or to run errands, as a result of traffic restrictions that had wider benefits. In each case please choose the level of additional journey time you’d find acceptable if you were making an everyday journey by car Base: All respondents (n=2071).
Framing the question
The interesting thing is that when we make these trade-offs explicit, something nudge theory tells us we should avoid, we see much more support. Our polling data suggests that around 80% of people would be willing to accept a delay to their own car journey to deliver environmental improvements, with women more likely to accept delays than men but no other clear demographic patterns.
Reducing air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and the number of vehicles on local roads are all judged as worth individual delays, with most people plumping for five to ten minutes as acceptable. The importance of framing the question is clear however, as slightly fewer people would accept a delay in
Behaviour change
order to increase the number of journeys on foot or by bike, perhaps seeing this as more of an individual benefit than a community one.
This data suggests that, when presented with a clear choice, most people are willing to accept a minor inconvenience in exchange for a wider benefit.
And while some point to the ‘say do’ gap between stated support for environmental measures and actual behaviour as evidence that the public aren’t as up for change as surveys suggest, a more charitable interpretation might be that people lack the resources, physical, social or informational, to act in line with their preferences.
So, what does this mean for behaviour change projects like LTNs? We think it strengthens the case for citizen engagement that presents people with the rationale for change, makes the trade-offs and impacts explicit, and gives them some say in what happens, going beyond a simple yes or no.
Consultations on particular proposals like LTNs (or, worse, schemes introduced without consultation) create the ideal conditions for kneejerk opposition to change3 .
Approaches to participation that start much earlier in the planning process and bring together local people and decision makers to consider the evidence and come to their own conclusions, are much more likely to result in solutions that all can live with. Who do you think should get to make decisions about traffic restrictions and other traffic measures? Please select the group you think should have the most influence on the decision Base: All respondents (n=2071).
Participatory processes have consistently been shown to generate recommendations which would have seemed unthinkable at an individual level, or in an adversarial political situation. Examples ranging from the Irish Citizens Assembly on abortion, to a Cambridge-based assembly on traffic problems in the city, show that these processes can come up with new solutions (though this isn’t guaranteed). Even better is to combine them with involving people in collecting their own evidence, particularly where there are low levels of trust, to counter distrust on both sides.
Importantly, collaborative processes also seem better aligned with people’s expectations about who decides what a place is going to be like. Our polling showed little support for decisions to be made by referendum or even by local councillors. Instead, when we asked people who should make decisions about traffic restrictions, most wanted to see “local residents working together with the local authority”, with a respectable second place for national government.
Citizen engagement isn’t a quick win, but another lesson from the LTN situation is that more haste doesn’t mean more speed. Schemes that were introduced without engagement are becoming mired in procedural arguments that will take far longer than an up-front conversation with residents.
Residents in some areas feel that the state has overreached, exerting new powers over private citizens without negotiating for them, and that’s when we see posters about North Korea in Ealing4 . These are lessons that local and central government needs to learn quickly before other decarbonisation programmes end up in the same state of gridlock.
Top tips for community engagement
l It’s not about huge scale projects like the Climate
Assembly, but more low tech and low key (although lots of this can be delivered virtually as the pandemic has shown).
l Defined area – working with the ‘natural’ neighbourhood, not a political boundary – think about the area people use regularly
l Start with the problem and a vision for how things might be when it’s addressed, not a detailed solution. Nobody likes to be told what to do and the council’s initial solution might not be the best one for the area
l Be as inclusive as you can, making space for different points of view, access needs, communication styles and levels of background knowledge l Start with the evidence, what the current situation is, what you are trying to achieve and why, and leave space for communities to tell you what they need to
l There are lots of toolkits available to support you in using a co-design approach, or you can get a facilitator
l Don’t just disappear at the end – even if no changes are made you have to go back to people and let them know why or you’ll lose the trust you’ve built. n Lucy Farrow is associate partner at BritainThinks and Tom Cohen is senior lecturer, transport, at University of Westminster.
1 https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19353047.photos-showfire-damage-ltn-barrier-east-oxford/ 2 https://www.rebeccawillis.co.uk/europe-the-environment-anddemocracy-the-perils-of-policy-by-stealth/ 3 https://www.onlondon.co.uk/introducing-low-trafficneighbourhoods-without-prior-consultation-was-a-mistake-say s-labour-london-politician/ 4 https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/residents-up-in-arms-over-lowtraffic-neighbourhoods/
