What works better? Stimulate employees to useful behavior through unconscious or conscious means? Through emotional or rational stimuli? Dutch researchers tested different approaches in practice. Nudge, the act of influencing behavior through subtle nudges, has become quite popular over the past ten years. In company canteens, for example, healthy food is often at the forefront. Nudges are based on the automatic, unconscious drives of our behavior – such as first grabbing food that is easy to reach – and responds to them.
Behavioral researchers have also been working with boosting. It is precisely about encouraging conscious, well-considered choices. For example, by providing information or training skills. Of course, influencing with information is not a new concept. But the question now is: which is more effective? Nudges sometimes produce nice behavioral effects – think of the classic fly in the urinals at Schiphol – but this is often short-lived. And if you remove the intervention, the behavior also extinguishes. The theory is that boosting leads to longer-lasting results, because people make their own choices that are not necessarily about convenience or moving with the environment. But does this also appear in practice?
The effect of nudging was clearly stronger. The effect of boosting seemed to last longer
Three Dutch researchers, Henrico van Roekel, Joanne Reinhard and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, compared nudging and boosting. That happened in a four-week experiment in a hospital, where adherence to the hand washing protocol was encouraged. The fieldwork was completed before the corona crisis, publication was this year.
One group of nurses was given a nudge. It took the form of a poster that responded to the emotion. Handwashing was presented as an important part of patient care (rather than tiring bureaucracy, as many nurses appeared to experience in the preliminary study).
Their colleagues got a boost: a poster aimed at increasing the risk literacy – the awareness of risks – by presenting the consequences of non-compliance with the hand washing protocol. There was also a flyer with information such as: 1 in 20 hospital patients contract a hospital infection.
The result? The effect of nudging was clearly stronger. Compliance with the protocol increased from 53 to 89 percent. However, the effect of boosting seemed to last longer. After removing the posters, the result of the nudge group dropped to 75 percent compliance, while hand washing within the boost group steadily increased to 80 percent.
The researchers warn against quick conclusions, such as: boost more, nudge less. It is also true that the difference between the two interventions may be smaller than previously thought.
Reinhard and Van Roekel on the phone: „You can say: a nudge stimulates and a boost informs. But this is also discussed. Thinking too black and white is not possible, because you cannot respond in isolation to either the automatic or the reflective thinking of people.”
Ultimately it comes down to the question: which tools work where and when? “Behavioural interventions do not work universally. You do not know whether the boost we have used also works to stimulate vaccination, for example. You have to test that again.”
Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.
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