Governments Want Citizens to Transact Online: And This Is How to Nudge Them There

by Peter John 10/04/2017

Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online.

by Peter John 10/04/2017

A randomised control trial that “nudged” users of a disability parking scheme to renew online showed a six percentage point increase in online renewals. Image: Wendell (Flickr).

In an era when most transactions occur online, it’s natural for public authorities to want the vast bulk of their contacts with citizens to occur through the Internet. But they also face a minority for whom paper and face-to-face interactions are still preferred or needed—leading to fears that efforts to move services online “by default” might reinforce or even encourage exclusion. Notwithstanding these fears, it might be possible to “nudge” citizens from long-held habits by making online submission advantageous and other routes of use more difficult. Behavioural public policy has been strongly advocated in recent years as a low-cost means to shift citizen behaviour, and has been used to reform many standard administrative processes in government. But how can we design non-obtrusive nudges to make users shift channels without them losing access to services? In their new Policy & Internet article “Nudges That Promote Channel Shift: A Randomised Evaluation of Messages to Encourage Citizens to Renew Benefits Online” Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online. They found that by simplifying messages and adding incentives (i.e. signalling the collective benefit of moving online) users were encouraged to switch from paper to online channels by about six percentage points. As a result of the intervention and ongoing efforts by the Council, virtually all the parking scheme users now renew online. The finding that it’s possible to appeal to citizens’ willingness to act for collective benefit is encouraging. The results also support the more general literature that shows that citizens’ use of online services is based on trust and confidence with public services and that interventions should go with the grain of citizen preferences and norms. We caught up with Peter John to discuss his findings, and the role of behavioural public policy in government: Ed.: Is it fair to say that the real innovation of behavioural…

Politics & Government

Brexit, voting, and political turbulence

by Peter John 18/08/2016

Explaining why many political mobilisations of our times seem to come from nowhere.

by Peter John 18/08/2016

Cross-posted from the Princeton University Press blog. The authors of Political Turbulence discuss how the explosive rise, non-normal distribution and lack of organisation that characterises contemporary politics as a chaotic system, can explain why many political mobilisations of our times seem to come from nowhere.

On 23rd June 2016, a majority of the British public voted in a referendum on whether to leave the European Union. The Leave or so-called #Brexit option was victorious, with a margin of 52% to 48% across the country, although Scotland, Northern Ireland, London and some towns voted to remain. The result was a shock to both leave and remain supporters alike. US readers might note that when the polls closed, the odds on futures markets of Brexit (15%) were longer than those of Trump being elected President. Political scientists are reeling with the sheer volume of politics that has been packed into the month after the result. From the Prime Minister’s morning-after resignation on 24th June the country was mired in political chaos, with almost every political institution challenged and under question in the aftermath of the vote, including both Conservative and Labour parties and the existence of the United Kingdom itself, given Scotland’s resistance to leaving the EU. The eventual formation of a government under a new prime minister, Teresa May, has brought some stability. But she was not elected and her government has a tiny majority of only 12 Members of Parliament. A cartoon by Matt in the Telegraph on July 2nd (which would work for almost any day) showed two students, one of them saying ‘I’m studying politics. The course covers the period from 8am on Thursday to lunchtime on Friday.’ All these events—the campaigns to remain or leave, the post-referendum turmoil, resignations, sackings and appointments—were played out on social media; the speed of change and the unpredictability of events being far too great for conventional media to keep pace. So our book, Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action, can provide a way to think about the past weeks. The book focuses on how social media allow new, ‘tiny acts’ of political participation (liking, tweeting, viewing, following, signing petitions and so on), which turn social movement theory…