What gets missed when behavior gets reduced to nudges?
The problem with nudging is not nudging itself, the problem is what happens when it gets sold as behavioral science.
Because when we are actually working on behavior, we are not just picking a tactic and hoping it works, instead we are trying to understand what people are doing, what is getting in the way, what in the environment is shaping it, what in the system is reinforcing it, and what kind of response actually fits the problem.
That is a very different kind of work, than copying a nudge you saw.
-Working on behavior requires a systematic and evidence-based approach. -It requires us to define the behavior properly, frame the challenge in behavioral terms, and account for the context in which the behavior is happening. -It requires us to understand needs, local conditions, culture, constraints, and the wider system around the person. -It requires us to analyse the drivers of the behavior and related behaviors using an appropriate model -Select techniques and strategies that actually fit those barriers -Translate them into workable solutions, often by borrowing from design and other disciplines.
And then you still have to test the hypothesis and account for behavioral risk.
That is the work, so of it can be moved quicker and some can' depending on data, knowledge, levers and so on.
So the issues is not whether a nudge can be useful, in a certain context it can be (I don't really use them in my work as much, because rarely is the work I do about a one time change, and they are only a small tool in a big set)
The issue is what gets missed when people jump straight to the nudge before they have done the work to understand the behavior in the first place, and I feel that much of the materials out there show the solution, but skip how you got there., basically the intervention gets more attention than the behavior.
This is why I keep saying that a nudge cannot stand in for the full work of understanding and changing behavior, not because nudges are completely useless, but because behavior problems are usually bigger, more contextual, and more systemic than the way nudges tend to get sold.
That is what gets missed....