this document contains all articles necessary to pass the course consumer behavior given by Tony Evans. The literature is extensively explained with examples and results from each study.
Bridging the divide between behavioral science & policy- Fox & Sitkin (2015)
Traditional vs behavioral approaches to policymaking
According to the rational agent model, individuals, groups, and organizations are driven by
an evenhanded evaluation of available information and the pursuit of self-interest. From this
perspective, policymakers have three main tools for achieving their objectives: information,
incentives, and regulation.
- Information- education programs, documentation etc. Accurate information will
lead people to act appropriately
- Incentives- financial rewards and punishments proper incentives motivate
individuals and organizations to behave in ways that are aligned with society’s
interests
- Regulation- mandate or prohibition of a particular behavior. regulations provide a
special kind of incentive in the form of a legal sanction.
Individuals routinely violate the assumptions of the rational agent model in predictable
ways.
1. Individuals have severely limited capacity to attend to, recall, and process
information and therefore to choose optimally
2. behavior is strongly affected by how options are framed or labeled.
3. people are biased to stick with default options or the status quo
4. people are heavily biased toward immediate rather than future consumption.
One response to such observations of irrationality is to apply traditional economic tools that
attempt to enforce more rational decision-making.
Behavioral information tools leverage scientific insights concerning how individuals,
groups, and organizations naturally process and act on information. Feedback
presented in a concrete, understandable format can help people and organizations
learn to improve their outcomes and make better decisions. Similarly, simple
reminders can overcome people’s natural forgetfulness and reduce the frequency of
errors. Decisions are also influenced by the order in which options are encountered
and how options are grouped.
Behavioral incentives leverage behavioral insights about motivation. For instance, a
corner-stone of behavioral economics is loss aversion, the notion that people are
more sensitive to losses than to equivalent gains. Organizational incentive systems
can therefore make use of the observation that the threat of losing a bonus is more
motivating than the possibility of gaining an equivalent bonus. the impact of
monetary payments and fines depends on how people subjectively interpret those
interventions.
o Nudges are a form of soft paternalism that stops short or formal regulation.
They involve designing a choice environment to facilitate desired behavior
without prohibiting other options or significantly altering economic
incentives. Well-designed nudges make it easy for people to make better
decisions. Opening channels for desired behavior (for instance, providing a
, potential donor to a charity with a stamped and pre-addressed return
envelope) can be extremely effective.
o Conversely, trivial obstacles to action can prove very effective in deterring
undesirable behavior. For instance, secretaries consumed fewer chocolates
when candy dishes were placed a few meters away from their desks then
when candy dishes were placed on their desks.
Beyond such tools, rigorous empirical observation of behavioral phenomena can
identify public policy priorities and tools for most effectively addressing those
priorities.
Three lessons to be learned from economists’ successes.
1. Simplicity= communicate a simple and intuitively compelling worldview that can be
easily summed up
2. Field tests= Economists value field data and quantify their results. Economists are less
interested in identifying underlying causes of behavior than they are in predicting
observable behavior, so they are less interested in self-reports of intentions and
beliefs than they are in consequential behavior. It is important to note that
economists also quantify the financial impact of their recommendations, and they
tend to examine larger, systemic contexts The universal language of policy is
money
3. Positions of influence= economists have placed themselves in a position of interest.
Naturally, economics is particularly useful when answering questions of national
interest, such as what to do in a recession, how to implement cost–benefit analysis,
and how to design a market-based intervention. There have only been few
opportunities for behavioral scientist to make a difference. Success stories have been
mostly limited to a small number of cases in which behavioral scientists have (a)
exerted enormous personal effort and initiative to push their idea into practice, (b)
aggressively promoted a research idea until it caught on, (c) partnered with industry
to implement their idea, or (d) embedded themselves in an organization with
connections to policymakers.
successful behavioral solutions are not only implemented through the public sector:
Sometimes policy challenges are taken up by private sector businesses. Residents were
provided with feedback concerning their own and their neighbors’ average energy usage (=
descriptive social norm), “Energy hogs,” who had consumed more energy than average used
much less energy the following month. “energy misers,” who had consumed less energy
than average during the baseline period, consumed more energy the following month. A
condition was included in which feedback provided not only average usage information but
also a reminder about desirable behavior (=an injunctive social norm). This took the form of
a handwritten smiley face if the family had consumed less energy than average and a
frowning face if they had consumed more energy than average. This simple, cheap
intervention led to reduced energy consumption by energy hogs as before and also kept
energy misers from appreciably increasing their rates of consumption.
Bridging the divide between behavioral science and policy
policymakers and practitioners are increasingly receptive to behavioral solutions but may
not know how to discriminate good from bad behavioral science. A better way of bridging
,this divide between behavioral scientists and policymakers is urgently needed. The solution,
we argue, requires behavioral scientists to rethink the way they approach policy applications
of their work, and it requires a new vehicle for communicating their insights.
behavioral scientists will need to adopt a more problem-driven approach rather than merely
searching for applications of their favorite theories.
1. Identify timely problem
2. Study context and history
3. Apply scientifically grounded insights
4. Test in relevant context
5. Quantify impact and scalability
6. Communicate simply and clearly
7. Engage with policymakers on implementation
The emotional path to action: empathy promotes physical distancing and wearing of face
masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. – Pfatthecher, Nockur, Böhm, Sassenrath, Bang
Petersen
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Two
measures implemented in many countries to curb the spread of the disease are (a)
minimizing close contact between people (“physical distancing”) and (b) wearing of face
masks. both measures are intended to reduce the excessive demands on health systems and
thus allow effective treatment of the most vulnerable. In the present research, we tested the
idea that physical distancing and wearing of face masks can be the result of a prosocial
emotional process—empathy for people most vulnerable to the virus.
To enforce physical distancing, many health institutions and authorities have opted for a
com- bination of encouragement and the implementation of strong regulations such as
limiting social life in public spaces or enforcing strict guidelines for the operation of public
institutions and private companies. Policy implementations regarding face masks have
differed across countries and over the course of the pandemic. It is difficult because on the
one hand social distancing protects oneself and others and on the other hand it implies
reducing social contact. Building on these notions, we tested the idea that physical
distancing and wearing face masks can reflect and can be encouraged through the activation
of a prosocial emotional process—empathy for people most vulnerable to the virus.
Empathy, prosociality and health behaviors
Past research has convincingly demonstrated the beneficial consequences of both affective
as well as cognitive empathy for the welfare of others. Specifically, cognitive empathy (i.e.,
taking the perspective of others) has been linked to reductions of intergroup conflicts and
prejudice, whereas affective empathy (i.e., a concern for and an understanding of vulnerable
others) has been shown to promote altruism and caring. In the modern health context,
affective empathy in particular has been shown to improve health outcomes.
The present investigation had two major findings. First, empathy for people most vulnerable
to the virus represents an emotional basis regarding the motivation for physical distancing
, and wearing a face mask. Second, we can actually use empathy to promote the motivation in
people to follow these two important measures. Importantly, providing individuals with
mere background information about why it is important to adhere to physical distancing or
to wear a mask was not enough to significantly increase the behavioral motivation; only if
empathy was added did motivation increase.
in addition to basic information, affective empathy is seemingly an emotional ingredient that
further increases the motivation to adhere to measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Therefore, when designing interventions and communication materials to change behavior
during the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers should consider enriching mere informational
content with emotional content.
The findings of the present studies are remarkable from four points of view.
1. the finding that empathy promotes the motivation to engage in protective measures
during the COVID-19 pandemic is particularly noteworthy given the already high
motivation
2. we want to refer to other well-powered studies that have found null effects when
testing how messages should be framed to increase adherence to measures during
the pandemic
3. it is interesting that the level of subjectively considering oneself (or others) as
vulnerable to the virus was rather similar in the empathy condition and in the
information-only condition. Empathy promotes the motivation to wear a face mask
beyond vulnerability perceptions. In this regard, we contribute to the empathy
literature by showing that threat perceptions to the coronavirus are unlikely to be
altered in an empathic state.
4. the present work (a) offers some of the largest preregistered experiments testing the
effect of empathy on prosocial tendencies and (b) offers an alternative account to the
idea that prosocial effects of empathy in past studies were driven by reduced
prosociality in the control condition rather than increased prosociality in the empathy
condition
lecture 2
The economic and cognitive costs of annoying display advertisements- Goldstein, Suri,
Mcaffee, Ekstrand-Abueg & Diaz
the authors address two primary questions: (1) What is the economic cost of annoying ads to
publishers? and (2) What is the cognitive impact of annoying ads to users?
In the online display advertising industry, advertisers pay publishers (websites) to run display
ads that users (website visitors) see alongside other content. Online display ads are graphic
images that can vary in size, shape, animation, duration, and more. Display advertising is a
large industry. In 2012, display-related ads garnered revenues of more than $12 billion in the
United States, or 33% of total online advertising revenue.
- For users, the cost of annoying ads is that they interfere with the enjoyment of the
very content that brought them to the site. Annoying ads may also cause users to
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