Mike Kelly and Alan Maryon-Davis have each contributed excellent chapters, writing separately on the political influence and administrative regulation of behaviour change. There is also a chapter that gives a summary of the role of nudge theory and its use in the implementation of government policy by the Behavioural Insight Team’s Michael Hallsworth and Michael Sanders.
Gerard Hastings and Marisa de Andrade’s chapter on stakeholder marketing and the subversion of public health gives a good introduction to the dark arts of corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing (for examples in my own areas of interest see Exercise is Medicine, GEBN, UKActive and academic conferences). Other chapters I enjoyed included Tim Chatterton’s overview and critique of behaviour change theories that discusses how different theories of change might be applied in different circumstances Denford, Abraham and colleague’s chapter on intervention design and evaluation and Daniel Welch’s contribution on social practice theory were also interesting.
Common themes across the chapters include references to the dual process theory that reminds us that behaviours involve both a reflective more thoughtful component as well as a faster more impulsive element that is built on a range of biases and heuristics, an idea that was given added momentum by Daniel Kahnemann. There is also an underlying tension between the idea of interventions that might address more personal, individual factors and those that are related to the wider ecological environment that the individual exists in. While these are well trodden paths the inclusion of social practice theory neatly bridges the two ends of the continuum and highlights how the actions of many individuals can produce patterns of social behaviour that are regular and predictable and can in turn influence other individuals.
The format of using chapter authors from diverse theoretical and ideological backgrounds creates an experience for the reader that demands engagement with the text and the various arguments of the authors. The inclusion of a range of behaviours that include, but are not limited to transport, diet and environmentalism highlights many similarities between the fields and gives a glimpse into the potential benefits of increased transdisciplinary work. It also hints at how many of these areas might elicit behaviour changes that are complementary to each other such as that of transport. The chapters are not without opinion and have plenty of contemporary reading to turn to beyond this book and the stop and think boxes and case studies are also good tools for helping students develop higher levels of critical thinking.
In conclusion the editor suggests there are three key actions to take away from this analysis. There is a call for a more culturalist perspective on changing behaviour that shifts the emphasis away from the perceived choice making of the individual to an examination of how that individual exists within broader sociocultural structures. There is also a call for more transdisciplnary research and more work on integrating policy and evidence, a task that quite rightly leads to a neat discussion on the “conundrum of evidence” and how the evidence producing and policy making communities might balance the call for more positivist approaches to evaluation with the benefits of integrating this with more qualitative analysis that captures the breadth and depth of an intervention's impact.
Overall, I enjoyed reading about different areas of human behaviour and how change might be initiated from a range of viewpoints. It's left me wondering how the academic silos can be disrupted more often and how collaboration across behaviours might also be beneficial in creating changes with multiple societal benefits.
Spotswood, F. (2016). Beyond Behaviour Change: Key issues, interdisciplinary approaches and future directions. Bristol: Policy Press.
This review is an edited version of one that was first posted on my own blog here
Ben Jane
8th April, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment