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New Best Practice Guide

Improving consumer understanding of contractual terms and privacy policies: evidence-based actions for businesses

This week we published our best practice guide on how to present contractual terms and privacy policies. Commissioned by BEIS, this guide is for all businesses who want to help their consumers better understand their T&Cs.

Terms and conditions represent some of the most complex and long-winded text that consumers come into contact with. For instance Paypal’s terms are longer than Hamlet, and it would take a little over three hours to read the terms of service and privacy notices of the five most popular social media and messaging apps.

A lack of understanding of T&Cs and privacy notices is likely to lead to less informed consumer decisions and potential regret (if, for example, you discover unexpected early termination fees). To be useful, terms should impart information to consumers. We therefore designed experiments to focus on exactly that: increasing understanding of key terms.

BX Awards 2019 now open for submissions!

Are you passionate about conducting outstanding behavioural research? Are you dedicated to improving policy, business or society through BI…or do you know of someone who is?

Good news – submissions for the BX2019 Awards are open!

Calling the very best of behavioural science: submissions for the BX Awards 2019 are now open! ???? 

Are you passionate about conducting outstanding behavioural research? Are you dedicated to improving policy, business or society through BI…or do you know of someone who is?

Good news – submissions for the BX2019 Awards are open!

The return of Behavioural Exchange to London this September is a chance to reflect on how far we’ve come in the last decade. Researchers and practitioners alike have ventured into new frontiers and expanded the scope, ambition and achievements of BI beyond what was initially thought possible. The positive impact of this work on citizens, businesses and society is huge – and we feel that it warrants recognition.

The BX Awards are designed to recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of scholars and practitioners in the field of BI. Award winners should be champions of behavioural science, leading original, challenging and socially impactful work. So whether you’re a prolific behavioural academic publishing groundbreaking papers, or a maverick civil servant conducting real-world interventions, we want to hear from you!

There are two categories: the BX Award for Outstanding Research and the BX Award for Outstanding Practitioner. 

Winners will receive a free ticket to BX2019 (and travel expenses up to £1,500 paid) where they will be presented with their prize in front of the most renowned names in behavioural science. 

Think you fit the bill? Submit your application by 9 August 2019 via email to BX2019@bi.team. For more information on how to apply see our application details page.  Please review the terms and conditions here.

Very best of luck!

Save £180 on your BX tickets ????

BX is just around the corner and so there's only a few more days to buy your BX2019 tickets at current prices.

Don't miss out on conference highlights such as a live recording of the Freakonomics podcast and keynote speeches from best-selling authors Dan Ariely and Cass Sunstein.

Buy your tickets before July 31st and save £180. 

Singapore super-medics, notes from Down Under, and getting ready for a new PM

It’s nearly a decade since BIT was formed in the newly minted Cameron-Clegg No10 of 2010. The UK’s new Prime Minister is BIT’s third at home, though we’ve been lucky to work with Premiers’ offices around the world over the years since our formation. As the UK civil servants polish the preparatory notes for the new PM, and Australian civil servants put theirs away, it seems a good time to reflect back, and to look forward.

Being in Australia this week (feels a strange time to be away from Westminster!) brings back memories of a time well before BIT when our two countries were exchanging thoughts on ‘behaviour change’. 

We're coming to Canada (and we’re hiring!) ????

I remember when I first learned about BIT’s work. In 2012, I came across BIT’s report Applying Behavioural Insights to Fraud, Error and Debt. I was working for the Deputy Minister of Government Services in the Ontario government at the time, and the report opened up a whole new way of thinking about the delivery of public services. 

Fast forward seven years, and I could not be more thrilled to share the news that BIT will be opening a Canadian office this year in Toronto. I joined BIT in early 2017. Over the last few years, my colleagues and I in BIT’s New York City office have worked on a wide range of social impact projects with Canadian partners. 

We’ve collaborated with all levels of government and nonprofits from coast to coast. Our projects have tackled important policy issues by applying a more nuanced, realistic model of human behaviour. We’ve rigorously evaluated our ideas, and we’ve helped build up behavioural science and evaluation capabilities in our partner organizations. For example, we worked with the MS Society and Rideau Hall Foundation on increasing charitable giving, and with the Ontario Securities Commission on encouraging retirement planning. 

Now, we’re collaborating with the McConnell Foundation’s WellAhead initiative to increase workplace wellbeing in Canada’s K-12 system, and we’re helping the Government of British Columbia’s Behavioural Insights Group achieve its operational excellence goals and ambitious policy priorities. 

It’s been exciting and fulfilling work, but we want to do more. There is so much opportunity for applying behavioural science and evaluation to the pressing challenges faced by Canadians and the organizations that serve their needs. In leading our new Canadian office, I hope to be able to bring BIT’s global experience and expertise to bear on priorities from public health, to environmental sustainability, to education, and everything in-between.

If you’re as excited about this as I am, you should consider becoming one of BIT Canada’s very first employees – we’ve just posted our first two jobs. We plan to do much more hiring in the coming months: subscribe to our email updates to make sure you’re the first to hear about new opportunities.

In the media

• This week David Halpern, our chief executive, joined The Guardian's Science Weekly Podcast for a discussion on online manipulation and what we can do about it. 

• We spoke to the Financial Times about our recent online harms report, and how we can address the imbalance of information between big corporations and consumers. 

• Rory Gallagher, our Australia and Asia-Pacific Managing Director, talked to The Guardian about the power Google reviews have over businesses.

BX2019: see you there?

It's August, which means Behavioural Exchange 2019 is just around the corner!

Bringing consumers to the centre of consumer protection in New Zealand 

Regulators are definitely getting smarter in their use of behavioural science and empirical methods, and lessons are being shared across the world. But are regulators still two steps behind commercial players, particularly when it comes to ‘market predators’?

In the last leg of my recent pacific trip, I took part in the New Zealand Commerce Commission Conference. The event had powerful examples of consumers being taken advantage of by ingenious, and sometimes duplicitous, practice – and also how regulators, and social entrepreneurs, were seeking to respond.

BX2019: see you there?

Behavioural Exchange 2019 is just around the corner!

BIT joins forces with the Centre for Homelessness Impact

For people who experience homelessness or are risk of it, accessing and maintaining a tenancy in the private rented sector (PRS) can be an uphill battle. Landlords literally hold the keys to the PRS, which is becoming an increasingly important part of the housing system. The decisions landlords make are vital. In a recent survey, 52% of landlords reported that they would be unwilling to let to tenants in receipt of housing benefit . Even a small increase in the proportion of landlords willing to accept people at risk of homelessness could increase housing availability and help to reduce levels of homelessness.

BIT is working with the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) to test the effectiveness of homelessness interventions by applying – and rigorously evaluating – behavioural science methods. 

How to stop sexual harassment as a bystander ????

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, many organisations and universities are searching for evidence-based strategies to combat sexual harassment. 

Encouraging bystanders, those who witness or hear about sexual harassment, to take action is a promising way to do this. Exciting new findings from The Behavioural Insights Team show that it is possible to help bystanders overcome the barriers to taking action and intervene when they observe sexual harassment or assault.

Still suffering from BX2019 FOMO? 

Behavioural Exchange 2019 has come and gone but don't worry if you couldn't make it. Over the next few weeks we'll be uploading footage from almost all BX2019 sessions to our YouTube Channel. 

Follow us to watch Cass Sunstein, Dan Ariely, Tali Sharot, Stephen Dubner and countless others tackle the biggest issues of today with behavioural science. Time to make the popcorn!

Diets in flux ????
Sustainable diets part 2 

In our first Sustainable Diets blog post, we discussed the urgent need for a more sustainable food system, with a vital component of this being a widespread shift towards eating less meat. Such diets are already on the rise among some demographics in the UK and elsewhere, but the overall numbers are still low. The ‘traditional’ British diet, like those in many other countries, is still considered to centre around meat.

This perception is important because the public appetite for policy change is diminished by the view that national diets are too steeped in tradition and too precious to meddle with. However, the history of human diets suggests that these perceptions are not necessarily well founded. Let’s look at some more examples to see how our diets have always been in flux – and often deliberately influenced. 

Designing emissions markets carefully ????
Marty Weitzman in memoriam

Professor Marty Weitzman, a giant in the field of environmental economics, passed away exactly one month ago. On his ‘month’s mind’, we reflect on Marty’s work on pricing carbon emissions.  

Giving behavioural insights and business policy a firm nudge ????

Our new report, ‘Boosting businesses: applying behavioural insights to business policy’, provides a guide to policymakers on how behavioural insights can make business policy more effective.

In the long run, improving  productivity is the most important way of raising the standard of living for a country’s citizens. However, in many developed countries around the world, productivity (and in turn, pay) has flat-lined since the Global Financial Crisis. The United Kingdom has lagged even further behind its peers during this time.

To design good business policy, we need to understand how people leading, managing and working in businesses really make decisions. Often, these don’t accord with the textbook theory of how firms behave. For example, the majority of managers mistakenly think their businesses are equally productive as or better than their peers. Owners also rely on rules of thumb rather than working out optional strategies when faced with a choice about their firm. And many managers of small businesses think about growth in terms of reputation, market share or employment rather than profits.

As a result of this, small changes in the design of business-oriented policies and communications can have a significant aggregate effects. For example, BIT recently partnered with Turkey’s Ministry of Trade to support businesses entering new export markets to apply  for funding to boost their international presence. We designed and sent four types of emails to businesses on behalf of the Ministry. We found that an ‘honest’ message, which was upfront about the challenges involved in applying for assistance and provided a step-by-step guide on how to do this, increased submissions for export support funding by 27 per cent.

Percentage of businesses that applied for a subsidy in BIT’s trial with the Turkish Ministry of Economy

The insights contained within the report’s first part are ‘first-generation’ behavioural interventions largely about communicating effectively with businesses. However, we believe behavioural science can and should go further than this. Beyond communication, behaviourally designed, market-wide interventions should also be part of policymakers’ toolkits. Yet we believe these receive relatively little attention in business policy at the moment. 

This is something we hope to change with the report’s second part, which maps out new frontiers. In particular, we identify three areas where we think policymakers should direct their attention next: 

1. Addressing behaviourally-based market failures: Many markets are not working well due to behaviourally based market failures. For example, is too difficult to find information on high-quality suppliers, leaving suppliers with poor incentives to improve quality and value for money. Ironically, some of our least transparent markets are exactly those where businesses themselves are the customers.
2. Improving the diffusion of knowledge and innovation across markets: A trial by academics in China found that business managers who took part in monthly meetings with other businesses to share advice saw an 8% increase in revenues a year later. Policymakers should test and evaluate how to bring peer-to-peer learning to businesses that don’t have the right connections and struggle to make the time to invest in networking.
3. Incorporate behavioural insights into mainstream economic policies: Policymakers should design business incentives that go with the grain of how businesses make decisions. For example, UK R&D tax reliefs cost £3.6bn a year, but small businesses say that reliefs rarely shift their decisions over whether to invest.  Policymakers should test redesigning reliefs like UK R&D tax reliefs to incorporate upfront rewards and timely prompts to encourage businesses to reinvest the proceeds of reliefs.

BX2019 session recordings now available ?????

Missed out on the biggest behavioural science conference in the world? Not to worry. We are delighted to announce that all recorded sessions from The Behavioural Exchange Conference 2019 are now available to on the BIT website. 

Highlights include keynote addresses from Cass Sunstein and Dan Ariely, as well as full-length sessions spanning a variety of topics such as sexual harassment, fake news, organisational change, diets and much more.

Time to get the popcorn out and delve into the world of BX2019. 

Humble empiricists win the Nobel Prize in Economics! ????

A huge congratulations to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer who have just won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics. 

All three were an inspiration for many of us at BIT. The book ‘Poor Economics’ by Dulfo and Banerjee; Kremer’s deworming study; and Duflo’s TED talk on ‘social experiments to fight poverty’, to cite only a few, motivated many of our team members to pursue careers in applied research.

Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer caused a revolution in development economics, and have closely inspired much of BIT’s international development work (for example BIT interventions that have doubled adherence to TB medication in Moldova, reduced headteacher absenteeism in Peru, and increased financial inclusion behaviours in Mexico).

Don’t tell me what to eat! ????

Sustainable Diets - Blog 3 of 4

"You can’t have any dessert until you’ve eaten your vegetables!” – every parent ever

Our previous two blog posts outline the argument for intervention in food choices. In our first, we outlined the undeniable need – from an environmental perspective – to shift towards more plant-based diets. In our second, we showed that big changes in national diets are actually quite common, and our food choices are often deliberately influenced by governments and industry. Still, the prospect of the state meddling with our diets is not welcomed by everyone – our food preferences are so deeply personal, aren’t they?

Let’s bring some behavioural science to this question.

BIT in the news on green number plates ????

This week Elisabeth Costa and Toby Park of BIT's Consumer and Energy team spoke to the print and television media about using behavioural insights to boost the uptake of electric cars by UK drivers. In a consultation with the Department for Transport, BIT suggested introducing a new social norm in the form of green number plates to highlight the growing prevalence of these cars on UK road and to encourage more people to swap to cleaner vehcicles. 

Join The GovTech Summit - 30% Discount!

Looking to connect with Europe's decision makers and brightest innovators? The Behavioural Insights team are offering our community a 30% Discount to the GovTech Summit! 

The GovTech Summit is Europe's leading GovTech event and an unparalleled opportunity for public servants, startups, technologists and investors to ignite conversation and connect with the people who can unlock their potential.

Last year, attendees were joined by Justin Trudeau, Sadiq Khan and Emmanuel Macron. This year, the GovTech Summit takes place in the incredible Palais Brongniart, Paris, on Thursday 14th November.

Speakers already confirmed include is Kersti Kaljulaid (President, Estonia), Matthew Hancock (Secretary of State for Health, UK) and Florence Parly (Minister for the Armed Forces, France) - with a few big speakers, including our keynote, to be announced soon! For more information on the event, see the GovTech Summit website. 

The GovTech Summit has been offered 30% Discount to BIT community. To claim your ticket, access the ticketing page through this link and use the code 'BITGOVTECH'.  

Join us and we will re-think government, together!

EAST for Health & Safety ????

Applying behavioural insights to make workplaces safer

Do warning signs and safety campaigns actually change our behaviour? Most of the time, the answer is ????. We think it’s time to bring rigorous evaluation to safety in the workplace, so much so, that we've written a report about it!

The EAST framework focuses on four simple principles to encourage a behaviour: make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST). This version of EAST focuses on how the behavioural insights approach can help keep people safe when they are at work. This field of health and safety in the workplace is often referred to as occupational safety and health (OSH).

Applying behavioral insights to Intimate Partner Violence 

Improving Services for Survivors in Latin America and the Caribbean

To mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we are launching our new report, written in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The report seeks to leverage insights from behavioral science to expand policymakers’ toolkits, improve the design of survivor services and, ultimately, lead to better life outcomes for women.

In this report, we aimed to provide policymakers and service providers with:

1. A diagnosis of potential behavioural barriers faced by IPV survivors and service providers (including helplines, the criminal justice system, healthcare services and shelters);
2. Proposed intervention ideas, informed by behavioural science, that can be tailored to existing services.

Are you a freak? ????

Our Chief Executive, David Halpern, joined renowned author and podcast-savant Stephen Dubner on the #Freakonomics podcast this week to discuss billion dollar interventions. Recorded live in London at BX2019, with commentary from comedian Andy Zaltzman (The Bugle).

In the news... ????

We have worked with the Mayor of London’s Violence Reduction Unit to carry out the first ever capital-wide assessment of violence.

In our new report we bring together data analysis and new research from leading academics to complement the voices of London’s communities with evidence of large-scale patterns and trends to inform decision making.

We also present the evidence on what works to prevent violence so policy makers can incorporate insights about what has previously been effective and why into new or existing programmes, and make commissioning decisions based on a good understanding of what we do and do not know. 

In honour of our new report with the Mayor of London's Violence Reduction Unit, we decided to take an in-depth look at crime and violence in the UK. From data-driven crime prevention strategies to behaviourally-informed phishing emails, BIT's crime team take a look at the state of crime in the UK and what can be done to prevent it.