Behavioural insights and nudge theory

Dydd Mercher 18 Ebrill 2018

Behavioral insights used to influence the actions we take as human beings are becoming more commonplace, as is the adoption of nudge theory. The use of behavioral insights has achieved milestones such as the addition of 100,000 donors to the organ register and improved tax repayment rates.

The Government even has its own behavioral insights team: you can find out more about what they do here.

Nudge theory

Nudge theory is the idea that small, easy to implement changes can have a positive effect on behaviour. A great example of this is the Government's automatic enrolment into a pension scheme, you can opt out of contributing to the scheme, but most haven’t.

Why is this? People want to save for retirement, they know they should but somehow, they needed an extra ‘nudge’. Since auto enrolment, pension scheme enrolment has increased year on year: in 2016-2017 24.8 billion was contributed to personal pensions, the highest ever on record.

Nudge theory can be used in many ways, here at Excel Civil Enforcement we use it to encourage debtors to pay. We do this in several ways that we have found to be effective.

Seeking approval

Most people seek approval from others, therefore including information about the percentage of individuals that pay by direct debit is a useful way to encourage a debtor to pay this way, which means we in turn are more likely to be paid.

In the same vein, people are influenced by their peers so including a statement of 89% of your neighbors have paid their tax on time is a handy statistic to be able to include when requesting payment.

Keeping it personal

Personal messages are effective, so using a name and sending a text message to a personal mobile number with the specific amount owed is an approach we champion.