Abstract
AbstractInterventions that tackle ‘last mile’ behaviors in the form of improved choice architecture are fundamental to Behavioral Public Policy (BPP), yet far less attention is typically paid to the nature and design of underlying system conditions and infrastructures that support these interventions. However, inattention to broader conditions that impact participant engagement and intervention functionality, such as barriers to access that deter participation or perverse structural disincentives that reward undesirable behaviors, may not only limit the effectiveness of behavioral solutions but also miss opportunities to deliberately design underlying ‘plumbing’ – the choice infrastructure – in a way that improves overall system efficacy and equity. Using the illustrative case of civic policy in food licensure, this article describes how using a ‘SPACE’ model to address Standards, Process mechanics and policies, Accountability, Culture within systems, and Evaluative and iterative feedback can support the development of improved choice infrastructure, contributing to BPP problem-solving efforts by helping practitioners create system conditions that are more conducive to the success of behavioral solutions.
Highlights
The application of behavioral science to public policy challenges in the form of Behavioral Public Policy (BPP) has been increasingly integrated into governmental functions as ‘nudge units’ and regularly deployed to encourage the public’s adherence to desirable civic behaviors (Hallsworth et al, 2017; Fishbane et al, 2020; Holz et al, 2020) and address widespread societal challenges (Almeida et al, 2016; Chapman et al, 2016; OECD, 2017; Garnelo et al, 2019)
There are examples of applying behavioral science more expansively to organizational units (Camerer & Malmendier, 2007; Hauser et al, 2017) or communities (Feng et al, 2018b), and in codified approaches such as Darton and Horne’s (2013) ISM Tool that recognize the influence of infrastructural factors on behavior, BPP’s dominant problem-solving frame typically remains narrowly focused on immediate choice environments
Several recent perspectives to address these gaps and tendencies have begun to emerge, among them ‘advanced’ BPP that contributes a more holistic, bottom-up lens to behavioral policy development practices (Ewert, 2019; Ewert & Loer, 2021), the increasing recognition of cultural, structural, and identity-driven aspects of decision-making (MacKay & Quigley, 2018; van Bavel & Dessart, 2018), and the integration of behavioral science with complex, adaptive systems thinking (Lambe et al, 2020; Schmidt & Stenger, 2021b; Bickley & Torgler, 2021). These positions have been bolstered by public health perspectives that recognize solutions within complex systems must look beyond tweaks to immediate choice architecture environments, and instead address the ways in which broader system conditions contribute to individuals’ abilities to choose and maintain preferred behaviors (Rutter et al, 2017; Bradley et al, 2020; Greenhalgh, 2020)
Summary
Several recent perspectives to address these gaps and tendencies have begun to emerge, among them ‘advanced’ BPP that contributes a more holistic, bottom-up lens to behavioral policy development practices (Ewert, 2019; Ewert & Loer, 2021), the increasing recognition of cultural, structural, and identity-driven aspects of decision-making (MacKay & Quigley, 2018; van Bavel & Dessart, 2018), and the integration of behavioral science with complex, adaptive systems thinking (Lambe et al, 2020; Schmidt & Stenger, 2021b; Bickley & Torgler, 2021) These positions have been bolstered by public health perspectives that recognize solutions within complex systems must look beyond tweaks to immediate choice architecture environments, and instead address the ways in which broader system conditions contribute to individuals’ abilities to choose and maintain preferred behaviors (Rutter et al, 2017; Bradley et al, 2020; Greenhalgh, 2020). It proposes using a ‘SPACE’ model to help practitioners systematically analyze current systems and develop new choice infrastructure using the case example of Chicago food licensure, and concludes with implications and considerations related to embracing this new set of practices
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