achieving behaviour change through schools nov 2013 ben hudson
TRANSCRIPT
Achieving behaviour change through Schools
Nov 2013 Ben Hudson
Cleaner Air 4 Schools Pilot
Cleaner Air 4 Schools
• Transport for London Cleaner Air Fund – Cleaner Air 4 Schools pilot project
• Increase awareness and understanding of air pollution• Improve the confidence, knowledge and skills of the
school community around air quality• Explore the potential for sustainable behaviour change
amongst parents, teachers, pupils and school governors.
Cleaner Air 4 Schools Pilot Beneficiaries
• 3,491 participants spent 1247 hours taking part in CA4S activities (direct)
• We hoped to reach 5000 people, but through bulletins, media and communications we raised awareness to an estimated 31,804 people in the school communities and across wider London (indirect)
Behaviour Change
• Reduced car travel by 35% (of those who regularly drive),
• Reduced car idling 11% • Increased cycling by 58% (of those who already cycle) and • Increased use of public transport by 5%
Cleaner Air 4 SchoolsPilot project outcomes
Toolkit
Change mechamisms
Why work with schools
• Children are more vulnerable to the effects of air quality
• Education, education, education
• Key life changes
• School community
• Child/Parent team
Christakis
Creating an air quality improvement infrastructure
Cleaner 4 School Activites
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Clean Air in London Simon Birkett
http://cleanairinlondon.org/presentations/effective-local-action-on-air-pollution-in-london/
Cleaner Air 4 Schools Activities
• Classroom based learning
• Citizen science Making an invisible issue visual‘seeing is believing’
- Traffic survey - Idling survey- Travel surveys
Heavy Metals: Ghost Wipes
Lichen Observation
NO2: Diffusion Tubes
Cleaner Air 4 Schools Activities
• Social Marketing Creating a social norm
- AQ Badge - Moth pledges- Creative writing Zero Hero drawing- Poster design- School assembly - Parental engagement events - Dress up / walk to school days - Prize giving, certificates
CA4S ActivitiesNO2 Diffusion Tubes
• A great hands-on way for pupils to interact with science
• Consists of a tube with a fine mesh. It is left out for 2 weeks to collect an air sample then is sent to a lab
• Determines the concentration levels of NO2 pollution in an area
CA4S ActivitesGhost Wipes
• Simple wipes that dissolve during analysis
• Used to detect the presence of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and zinc
• A small area is sectioned off, cleaned, and left for 2 weeks. It is then sampled using a ghost wipe which is sent off to a lab
CA4S ActivitiesLichen Observation
• Students are taken outside to observe lichens growing in their area
• Lichens are a cross between algae and fungus that grow on various surfaces
• Different lichens thrive in different levels of NO2 so they can act as a practical indicator of air quality
Our Results
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Schools Are Affected by Air Pollution!
Prior Weston Primary School
Oxford Street
St John’s Upper Holloway
CanonburySt. Edwards RC Primary
St. Vincent’s Primary
Christchurch CoE Bentinck Primary
Cleaner Air 4 SchoolsPupil’s Findings
• Each of the participating schools found levels of NO2 in excess of EU limits, particularly on busy roads where NO2 levels were as high as 81 µg/m3.
• Air quality exceeded EU limits within a 200m radius of the schools
• Nitrogen-sensitive lichens were not present within 200m of busy roads.
Cleaner Air 4 Schools: Diffusion Tube (NO2)Prior Weston Primary School – Survey Time: December 2012
to January 2013
• 5,454 participants have participated in Cleaner Air 4 Schools activities, and a further 126,492 people were reached through promotion and communications.
• Cleaner Air 4 Schools was mentioned in 2 Radio interviews, including Radio LBC Morning News and Radio Capital Breakfast, on 27th February 2013 across the country. It was estimated that 734,000 people listened the radio show across the country.
Outreach
• Engagement of parents was found to be strongest where schools had parent and governor champions.
• 78-81% parents are worried about effect of London’s pollution on children’s health.
• 64% of parents felt they had learned about local air quality issues and actions they can take to reduce it.
• 68-85% of parents want to know more about the project, the problem and ‘get involved’ in solutions
• Only 3% of pupils cycled to school, 35% expressed an interested in doing so.
• 100% of those involved in the programme rated their learning as good.
Cleaner Air 4 SchoolsProject outcomes
Behaviour Change
• Reduced car travel by 35% (of those who regularly drive),
• Reduced car idling 11% • Increased cycling by 58% (of those who already cycle) and • Increased use of public transport by 5%
Cleaner Air 4 SchoolsPilot project outcomes
Cleaner Air 4 Schools Quotes
• “My dad left the engine on and I told him ‘Hey dad you left your engine on - it’s creating air pollution!’ He said ‘I will turn the engine off next time!’“ Pupil Champion
• “The children have absolutely loved it and have been inspired to really take things further. We don’t have to stop do we? They’ve come up with loads of new ideas for projects and things and want to keep going.”Teacher champion
• “I told my dad about air quality. He was planning to buy a Nissan, but when I told to him about air pollution, he changed his mind and decided to buy an electric car.” Pupil Champion
Changing behaviourInfluences on peoples’ behaviours, and suggested ways
to change them
Changing Behaviours?
Influences on peoples’ behaviours, and suggested ways to change them
Stephen Skippon, LSx trustee
What motivates people?
21st century man
What moves and motivates people?
1. People are affected by what others around them do
2. Habits are important
3. People are motivated to do the right thing
4. People’s self expectations influence how they behave
5. People are loss averse
6. People are not always rational!
7. People need to feel involved and effective to
make a change
Behavioural Economics,
7 principles for Policy-makers,
New Economics Foundation 2005
Thaler………
Kasser.....Aspiration index
Christakis
Dunbar……
“Mindspace”: A users’s guide to what influences our
behaviour
• “Mindspace” is a report by the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights team and the Institute for Government
• It outlines an alternative to the traditional “rational choice” model of behaviour that has been behind most public policy until recently
• It’s based on modern developments in psychology and behavioural economics, that recognise that peoples’ behaviours are often influenced, non-consciously, by aspects of the context or situation they happen to be in
Nine influences on behaviour
• Messenger – we are heavily influenced by who communicates information
• Incentives – our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts, such as strongly avoiding losses
• Norms – we are strongly influenced by what others do
• Defaults – we “go with the flow” of pre-set options
• Salience – our attention is drawn to what is novel and what seems relevant to us
• Priming – our actions are often influenced by cues we pick up non-consciously from the immediate environment and situation we’re in
• Affect – our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions
• Commitments – we seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate other people’s actions towards us
• Ego – we act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves
Messenger
We are heavily influenced by who communicates information
• Response to a message depends on how we react to the source of the information
• We’re affected by the authority we perceive the messenger to have (formally or informally), e.g.– People we think are experts (expertise that’s relevant)– People who we would like to emulate (e.g. celebrities)– People who we perceive as similar to ourselves, or who share our
interests
• We’re also affected by the feelings we have towards a messenger: we put more weight on information from someone we like than someone we dislike
Incentives
Our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly avoiding losses
• Impact of incentives depends on how big they are, and their timing• We dislike losses much more than we like gains of the same amount• We judge the value of money in relation to narrow reference points• We allocate money to different mental “budgets”, and are reluctant to
move it between them• We over-estimate the likelihood of small probabilities (like our
chances of winning the lottery)• We prefer small but immediate gains to bigger but longer-term ones
Norms
We tend to do what those around us are already doing
• Social and cultural norms are the expectations or rules about how to behave that we share with members of our social groups or culture
• Norms can be explicitly stated: e.g. “No smoking” signs• Or implicit in the behaviour we observe from others• Implicit norms can spread through social networks• Learning about what other people do in a similar situation can be
“internalised” as a new norm that we then tend to follow
Defaults
We “go with the flow” of pre-set options• Many decisions we take every day have a “default” option (whether
we recognise it or not)• Defaults are options that are pre-selected if a person doesn’t make
an active choice otherwise• People have an in-built bias towards accepting default options,
even if doing that has significant consequences, because it minimises mental effort
• Changing the default option can often change a lot of peoples’ behaviours “by default”
• E.g. making enrolment in a work pension scheme the default, that people must actively opt out of, has increased uptake of work pensions
Salience
Our attention is drawn to what is novel and what seems relevant to us
• Our behaviour is greatly influenced by what our attention is drawn
to• In our daily lives we are bombarded with stimuli; we filter much of
this out• But we pay attention to stimuli:
– that are novel
– that are relevant to our goals
– That are simple and easily accessible
Priming
Our actions are often influenced by cues we pick up non-consciously from the immediate environment and situation we’re in
• Priming is about how peoples’ behaviour is affected if they have been exposed to, or “primed”, by cues in the environment beforehand
• Priming often works outside conscious awareness – we don’t know that our behaviour is being affected all the time by stimuli in our environment that act as primes
• In a famous research study, people who had read a list of words that contained many words relating to older people, walked more slowly afterwards than other people whose list didn’t contain those words
Affect
Emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions
• Affect (experience of emotion) is a powerful influence on decision-making and behaviour
• Emotional responses can be rapid, triggering behavioural responses before people are even aware what they are reacting to
• We tend to avoid things and behaviours that we associate with negative affect (fear, anger, anxiety, etc.
• We tend to seek out things and behaviours that we associate with positive affect (joy, elation, satisfaction)
• These responses can over-ride what might seem to be sensible, rational choices
Commitment
We seek to be consistent with our public promises, and reciprocate other people’s actions towards us
• We tend to prioritise short-term goals over long-term interests, often procrastinating and delaying decisions that would support the latter
• We can use “commitment devices” such as making public pledges, or just specific plans, to help us achieve long-term goals
• Commitments are more effective if the costs of failure are high: e.g. breaking a public pledge damages how other people see us, as well as our self-esteem; breaking a secret pledge to ourselves damages self-esteem only
• We also have a strong instinct for “reciprocity” – e.g. accepting a gift acts as a strong commitment to return the favour (that’s why marketers give us free samples!)
Ego
We act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves
• We tend to act in ways that support a positive and consistent self-image
• For example, we tend to buy goods whose symbolism (what goods say about their users) is consistent with our self-images
• When our behaviours and our beliefs are in conflict, we sometimes adjust our beliefs rather than our behaviours
• This challenges the view that we need to change attitudes first, and then behaviours will change
Children Travelling to school:
• One third of school children travel to school by car
• Over 1m trips are made at around 3.00 pm on weekdays;
Whirlpools
Ratchet
Systems within systems
( Addressing the) Pin wheels
Questioning our Comforts
after Elisabeth Shove
Children Travelling to school: • One third of school children travel to school by car• Over 1m trips are made at around 3.00 pm on weekdays;
WhirlpoolsParents want to pick a ‘good’ school for their children
Children are safe and under control in the car
I am exercising choice by sending them to the best school
I make my children proud turning up at the school in my car
People will always want to exercise choice in schools
Ratchet
By escorting them to school every day I am keeping them away from bad influences
We need to replace this with a village feel where driving to school is spurned.
Can we break This illusion of ‘choice’
Systems within systems
This is too big an issue for me to handle, I don’t have the skills to sort it. Create small solutions.
My new job needs a car
In competing priorities People will put getting to work & perceived safety first
My job needs a car
There are no other good options
Create a social marketing campaign - No idling at the school gates
Support LEA & NHS funded walking buses through impact bonds:• Improving truancy and attendance stats•Improving fitness levels Marketing tag lines;
Quality time in walking to schools
( Addressing the) Pin wheels
“I get quality time whilst they are in the car”
Create social marketing through PTA groups to create a concrete ‘social norm’ that walking and public transport IS the way to get to school
Questioning our Comforts after Elisabeth Shove
How willing are we to change the way we travel?
The vertical axis shows the level of positive impact on air quality, while the horizontal axis shows the willingness of people to change their lifestyle
