Impact Models - Behaviour Change

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“All impact organisations are behaviour change organisations, whether they know it or not”
- Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation

Do you remember that time when the band U2 downloaded their new album onto everyone’s iPhone and iPod?
Back in 2014, U2 partnered with Apple to release their new album Songs of Innocence.
Apple spent US$100m on the campaign, adding it to over 500 million users accounts in a single day.
There are two ways of describing this event:
A) U2 had one of the most significant album releases in history, generously making their art free and easy to access for half a billion people.
Lead singer Bono called it “the most personal album we’ve written”, and over 81 million people listened to it in the first month alone.

B) The launch and distribution was received so poorly that all involved made public apologies.
Nobody has tried to repeat the move since, and despite tremendous exposure you can’t name a single song from the album.

Both of these descriptions are probably true, but I bet the creators only thought about the first scenario.
You can imagine the love and generosity that went into the planning of this project, they thought they were giving the world a gift.
Instead the album’s only cultural significance is in the disastrous campaign, the music itself hasn’t made a dent.
It’s a great example of the difference between being busy and being successful.
Distributing an album to 500 million people overnight sounds like an incredible achievement, but unfortunately that’s not how we measure the value of a piece of art.
This was an album designed to make people think and feel, to bring joy and an important message.
Instead the emotion it triggered was anger and frustration, causing all sorts of headaches for people who didn’t have much free space on their devices or low data caps.

I like this story because it reminds me that good intentions and efficient systems are no guarantees of success.
If we’re not clear on who our work is for, what we want to do and how we’ll know that things are better than when we started, then we might spend a whole lot of time and money building something that has the opposite effect.
We will have efficiently made the problem worse.

Impact and Behaviour Change
We talk a lot about “Impact”, but what does Impact actually look like?
I like Kevin’s definition: Impact comes from someone doing something different.
If we’re treated our impact model like a recipe for change, then we’ll need to be specific about who we’re hoping to influence, and what exact behaviour we want them to start/stop/substitute.

For example, Keep Cup’s impact doesn’t come from the number of reusable cups it saves, but rather from the amount of people who choose to not purchase takeaway coffee in a disposable cup.
If I were to buy a takeaway coffee in a disposable cup and then pour it into my Keep Cup, no positive environmental benefit would have occurred.
I get the benefit of drinking out of glass rather than paper, but I can’t pretend that I’ve done anything to help the planet.
For Keep Cup to have impact, they need a specific person (me) to carry their cup with them, and then refuse to purchase beverages in disposable cups.

The same goes for smartwatches and fitness trackers like Fitbit.
If 1,000 people buy a tracker today, look at the data it provides and then not change any element of their lifestyle, it would be hard to see any impact from these 1,000 devices.
Real impact would be the increase in steps taken each day, the decrease in extended sedentary periods, and the net change in how much exercise the wearer performs each week.
You could argue that a rubber band with the message “get off your butt” could achieve the same impact, if you could validate that this phrase did indeed get the wearer up and walking.

If we’re going to change people’s behaviour on a large scale, we need to be hyper clear on exactly what needs to happen, and then design an intervention to guide that behaviour.
We’ll know that we’re clear when we can write down who does what, in what order, with as few steps and assumptions as possible.

For example:
“Employees earning under $60,000 p.a. agree to automatically divert part of their future pay raises towards their superannuation”

“Middle aged men in Australia visit their GP twice per year, are transparent about their situation and follow their GP’s advice” 

“Farmers in Indonesia dedicate half of their arable land to growing cash crops, follow the advice of agronomists, harvesting and replanting their crops at specified intervals.”

“NFL teams agree to interview ethnic-minority candidates for every head coaching and senior football operation jobs”

Framing the behaviour change in a sentence is useful, because it describes the conditions for success.
e.g. The aim should not be to run financial education workshops but rather for employees to save more money each year.

Not for men to visit the GP, but for them to be honest and then actually follow the advice that they’re given.

Not for farmers to be given agronomic training, but for them to grow more crops and to sell them for a fair price.

Not for NFL teams to publicly state their philosophies, but for them to actively seek out ethnic minority candidates for every round of interviews.

If you aren’t clear on what behaviour needs to change, it will be difficult to know if your intervention is any good.

It’s also worth thinking about The Monkey’s Paw, a mental check to see if what you literally ask for will actually make you happy.
For example, if farmers doubles their harvest but then the market gets flooded and the price halves, we won’t have achieved any meaningful progress.
That’s why we add extra descriptors like ‘…at a fair price’ – it’s the combination of higher yields and decent prices that lead to increased household incomes.
Going to the doctor doesn’t magically heal people, it’s the combination of diagnosis, prescriptions and diligently following the process that leads to a reduction in preventable deaths.
By spelling out what you want with this additional detail, you make it clear to everyone involved what is required for your vision to become a reality. 

Three Considerations
Kevin outlines three good considerations that will increase your chances of changing people’s behaviour:
1. Are the right conditions in place?
2. Are the right incentives in place?
3. Will it last?
Let’s use our Keep Cup example to explore these questions.

The Right Conditions
You could argue that any cup could be a reusable coffee cup, and you’re sort-of right.
At a material level, yes: a cheap glass from IKEA does the same job of holding hot liquid as a Keep Cup that is 20x more expensive.
At a social level, no: not many people felt comfortable handing a barista their old IKEA glass from home for their takeaway coffee.
There were no signs up on the walls outlawing the practice…it just never seemed to happen.

For Keep Cup’s intervention to work, they needed cafes to be enthusiastic about this new behaviour.
They designed their intervention as a “Barista Standard” cup, so that cafes would know exactly how much milk to pour, and therefore refrain from rebuking customers who brought in random mugs.
They persuaded cafes to stock and sell these branded cups, a an additional revenue stream for the café and a visible sign that the café would gladly accept your own reusable cup whenever you came in for a takeaway.

The Right Incentives
I think part of the reason Keep Cup has become a household name is the element of personalisation – you can choose the size and material of the cup, the colour of the band and the colour combo of the lid.
Rather than a bland commodity, each cup feels unique, and therefore more treasured by its owner.
The other incentive has been cafes offering discounts for customers who bring their own cups with them.
I personally experienced this when I would get halfway to my local café, realise I’d left my Keep Cup on my desk, then double-back to get it since I’d save 50c.
Had there been no discount, I probably would not have changed my behaviour and ended up with a few more single-use cups in landfill.

Longevity
The challenge with novelty is that it fades so quickly.
If we want specific people to change their behaviour permanently, we need an intervention that won’t fade away within a few weeks.
Last year I brought my Keep Cup with me to a workshop, and left it at the conference centre.
I called the venue, but they hadn’t located it.
In all honesty, I have not yet replaced it.
My cup had a good run, I probably used it 80-100 times, but for some reason I haven’t bought another one.
These cups need to be used 15-20 times just to environmentally break even; if you use it once and bury it in the back of your pantry, you’ve arguably done more harm than good.
For this reason, Keep Cup will want to ensure that people constantly use their cups throughout the year, then replace them when lost or broken. 

Mulago Foundation talk about the equation that sits at the heart of any behaviour change: the cost-benefit calculation.
When we ask someone to change their behaviour, it’s not through force or coercion, but by making them an offer that works in their favour.
There’s always a cost to making any sort of change – we have to unlearn old habits, use more of our brainpower, run the risk of failure, spend money or energy creating a new setup, etc.
Our job is to make the benefits feel greater than those costs.
If the benefits seem small or confusing, then most people will opt to do what they’re already doing, which means there’s no genuine impact.

Here’s what’s fascinating: even if you show people that the benefits outweigh the costs, people might still choose the option that’s worse for them.
Perhaps they have an emotional reaction that clouds their judgement.
Perhaps they have a bias that skews their perceptions.
Perhaps they see the change as being too hard to implement.
Kevin describes these as Heart, Head and Hands – the three “dials” that we can adjust to make behaviour change more palatable and more likely to succeed.

The Heart Dial
“It turns out that what we feel is actually more important than what we think. For most behaviour it’s the entry point, it’s the door. If you don’t get past the emotion door, you don’t get to go through the other two.”

The heart is the first filter for new ideas – what does the idea make us feel?
We’d love to believe that we’re logical and rational machines, but the truth is that our emotions influence which options even make it through to our brain for further analysis.
Mulago identify four emotional drivers:

Status – we’re conscious of our status within our groups, and will take steps to boost or maintain that status.

Fairness – we have a natural sense of justice, and are reluctant to accept any change that feels unfair.

Belonging – we feel compelled to remain a part of our tribe, and will go to great lengths to avoid exclusion or ostracism.

Safety – we want to preserve what we have, and have a natural aversion to anything that could jeopardise our safety. 

A great example of status is the story of how potatoes became popular in Prussia, told here by Dave Trott:
“In 1774, King Frederick II of Prussia wanted to solve the food shortage by getting peasants to grow and eat potatoes.
But the peasants hadn’t seen potatoes before and they didn’t want them.
So, instead, Frederick banned peasants from eating potatoes and placed guards around the royal potato patch.
The peasants were intrigued and began stealing potatoes from the King’s patch and growing them – then they began cooking and eating them.
Potatoes soon became the staple food all over Prussia.
People often don’t want something until they can’t have it – then they really want it.”
What I find interesting about that example is that Frederick changed the status of the crop, rather than the economics or the law.

Kevin talks about how an emotional response can sink an intervention:
“I’ve made it a habit to start asking the question “who loses?”
Is there anybody who would perceive it as threatening?
As a loss of their status or their stuff or their compensation?
If people perceive something as unfair, that outrage is going to undermine any successes you might have.
Looking at those drivers and going “Are any of these four going to sink my boat?” is a very useful screen”
This is often manifested in “Not Invented Here” syndrome, where new (and often superior) ideas and practices are rejected by a group since it upsets their current setup.
These fears are often based on emotions like jealously and the desire for recognition, and while they may sound like petty reasons, they often lead to good options being shunned for entire companies and communities.

For an example of belonging, look at the rapid adoption of Livestrong wristbands back in 2005.
These bright yellow silicone bands cost about $5, which went towards cancer research.
What started as a charitable gesture turned into a community signal – people wanted to have what everyone else seemed to have, and the bands sold out all around the world.
A rational person would realise that a $5 donation would have even more impact than pre-ordering a wristband, but then again, maybe we cared more about belonging rather than an effective charity.

The Head Dial
Everyone looks at the world through their own lenses, which colour and distort our perceptions of cost and benefit.
These are called Biases, and while our individual journeys might shape who we are, there are some common biases that affect pretty much everyone.
By understanding these biases, we can frame our behaviour change as being appealing, or at the very least avoid framing our offer in an unflattering light.

These biases include:

Motivated reasoning – when we’re invested in an outcome, we’ll use our reasoning to justify that outcome by any means possible.
You’ll see this when people watch sporting contests – their view of what constitutes a penalty or foul usually depends on whether or not it benefits their team.

Confirmation bias – it feels good to have something your beliefs and suspicions confirmed as true.
Our tendency is to seek out evidence that matches our beliefs, and overlook any evidence that contradicts what we believe.

Availability bias – we naturally seek out information that is easy to access, and we remember things that have happened recently.

Loss aversion – we will do anything to avoid a loss, even a hypothetical loss in the future. We don’t want to face the possibility of regretting things in the future, but this leads us to making irrational decisions today.

Sunk costs – we tend to persist with bad ideas or projects simply because we’ve invested a lot of time and money.
We tell ourselves that “we’ve gone this far, so we may as well keep going”, even when all the evidence suggests that what we’re doing isn’t working.

For example, an NGO distributing eyeglasses in the developing world found that a pair of glasses given for free would be treated poorly and soon broken.
The change they made was to charge $1 per pair – the financial investment completely changed how people treated and maintained their glasses, which in turn ensured that the glasses could serve them well for many years.

The Hands Dial
It’s one thing to make a change desirable, but it’s even better to make the change easy.
Is it possible to make the change easier to do than not do?
Is it possible to make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing?
For example, we can break the change into smaller chunks, which are easier to get started than a major daunting task.
We can also help make the new behaviour a habit, through incentives and social proof – people like doing what everyone else is doing.

Then there’s the physical environment – can we change their setting to encourage certain behaviours?
We can use the design of menus or retail stores to nudge people towards certain choices, framing them in a way that is easy to understand and gratifying to go along with.

Australia experienced a controversial example of this in 2019, when supermarkets stopped stocking single use plastic bags.
Where there was once a choice to either use disposable or reusable bags, there was now only two options – which reusable bag do you want today?
This was poorly received, but so far has proven to be very effective in changing shopper behaviour.

Another example is bars and clubs switching from glassware to plastic cups for alcoholic drinks.
It is much harder to injure someone with a plastic cup, thereby reducing the number of horrific “glassings” that can severely harm or kill people in fights.
You can argue that re-education is more important, but you can’t deny the effectiveness of removing potential weapons from known hotspots.

Putting It All Together
Here’s what to do next:
Firstly, we need to identify the behaviours that lead to our desired impact -  someone does something different.
Who are they and what new thing are they doing?
Here are two examples of these single sentences from Kevin Starr:
“Get the local community miller to put exactly the right amount of fortification powder into every bag of maize that they grind”
and
“Mothers in rural households need to use clean cookstoves exclusively”

Secondly, we need to define the cost-benefit deal that we’re proposing to our participants/customers/beneficiaries.
Is there a compelling reason for them to do something different?

Thirdly, we need to understand the factors that will colour or bias that cost-benefit deal, and use our Three Dials to frame the deal in an enticing manner.
What emotions will be involved?
What cognitive biases skew the situation?
What barriers can we remove?

Fourthly, we need to test our assumptions.
This might involve a Test Card, some customer interviews or running our ideas past some helpful mentors.
These help to raise previously unseen issues, spark new ideas and ultimately validate that these new behaviours will actually lead to our desired impact.