Messages focused on the economic costs or negative impacts to individuals were more effective than motivational messaging in gaining support from the public and reducing the psychological distance of an environmental issue.

1. Nudges do not respect freedom. 2. Nudges are based on excessive trust in government. 3. Nudges cannot achieve a whole lot.

research on health comm messaging effects

There are 6 implications I've drawn from this initial analysis: Authentic engagement - embed authentic engagement and feedback processes all through the campaign development journey Behaviour change levers audit - identify and review all of the behaviour change levers, not just those where communications can make a difference Medium, message, messenger - critically analyse the relationship between these for each creative execution Authentic inclusion - ensure diversity is embedded into your teams and planning processes and that this inclusion is authentic and supportive The constraints of comms - recognise circumstances where communications are not the most effective behaviour change and/or confidence building lever Remember that communications don't take place in a vacuum - reflect on how communications can have an impact on the system outside of comms touchpoints

If we want everyone to participate in public life, we must design and build an inclusive public realm that is accessible to all. Public life can’t just be available to the abled, young, or healthy. Everyone navigates the built environment differently, with abilities changing across a person's lifespan. The sizeable global population of people with physical, auditory, or visual disabilities, autism or neurodevelopmental and/or intellectual disabilities, or neuro-cognitive disorders will face greater challenges if we don’t begin to more widely apply universal design principles.

The small changes are often the ones that make a difference. Our guide presents effective, light-touch strategies to help your students get to and through college.

A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency coverage Authored by leading journalists from the BBC, Storyful, ABC, Digital First Media and other verification experts, the Verification Handbook is a groundbreaking new resource for journalists and aid providers. It provides the tools, techniques and step-by-step guidelines for how to deal with user-generated content (UGC) during emergencies.

the continued influence effect, which is the observation that the first pieces of information people hear continue to affect what people believe, even when they later find out that information is false.

The Humanitarian Innovation Guide is a growing online resource to help individuals and organisations find their starting point and navigate the humanitarian innovation journey.

To do so, we drew on a theoretical framework which highlights that defaults operate through three channels: first, defaults work because they reflect an implicit endorsement from the choice architect—your company’s HR department, your city’s policy office, your credit card company, your child’s school. Second, defaults work because staying with the defaulted choice is easier than switching away from it. Third, defaults work because they endow decision makers with an option, meaning they’re less likely to want to give it up, now that it’s theirs. As a result, we hypothesized that default designs that trigger more of these channels (also called the three Es: endorsement, ease, and endowment) would be more effective. In our analysis, we find partial support for this idea. That is, we find that studies that were designed to trigger endorsement (defaults that are seen as conveying what the choice architect thinks the decision maker should do) or endowment (defaults that are seen as reflecting the status quo) were more likely to be effective. In addition, we find that defaults in consumer domains tend to be more effective, and that defaults in pro-environmental domains (such as green energy defaults) tend to be less effective.

reactance

This commentary argues that social marketing and the application of behavioural sciences to policy constitute two converging paths towards better policies. It highlights points of convergence and divergence between both disciplines and the potential benefits of further embedding social marketing principles and methods within the recent trend of applying behavioural sciences to policy.

A free online course on behavioural insights for public policy from the Behavioral Economics Team of the Australian government

He told me his First Rule of Consulting: No matter how much you try, you can’t stop people from sticking beans up their nose... Time and time again, I come across situations where I think, “OMG! They are trying to stick beans up their nose!” It explains what’s happening and what I should do next. The only thing I can do in a beans-and-noses situation (notice my clever use of flight-attendant grammar forms?) is wait. Wait until the bean is in its final resting place. Then, with a calmness only seen in yoga instructors, I can turn to the nose owner and ask, “So, how is that working for you? Did it do everything you’d hoped?” Of course, if they answer they enjoyed it and it was wonderful, then they are not someone I can relate to or help in any way. However, if sticking a bean deep into their nostril doesn’t meet the very high expectations they’d had, I can now start talking alternative approaches to reaching those expectations.

4 types of nudges/sludges and characters to represent them

We test the effectiveness of an entertainment education TV series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model we show that “edutainment“ can work through an individual or a social channel. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in urban Nigeria where young viewers were exposed to MTV Shuga or to a placebo TV series. Among those exposed to MTV Shuga, we created additional variation in the social messages they received and in the people with whom they watched the show. We find significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes towards HIV and risky sexual behavior. Treated subjects are twice as likely to get tested for HIV eight months after the intervention. We also find reductions in STDs among women. These effects are stronger for viewers who report being more involved with the narrative, consistent with the psychological underpinnings of edutainment. Our experimental manipulations of the social norm component did not produce significantly different results from the main treatment. The individual effect of edutainment thus seems to have prevailed in the context of our study.