̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - nudging

Pedestrians choose healthy obstacles over boring pavements, study finds

ta385 — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 08:45:00 +0000

Millions of people in the UK are failing to meet recommended targets for physical activity. Exercising 'on the go' is key to changing this but while walking along a pavement is better than nothing it causes no significant increase in heart rate so only qualifies as mild exercise. Walking also fails to significantly improve balance or bone density, unless it includes jumping, balancing, and stepping down.

But would adults opt for such ‘fun’ routes if given the choice? A ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-led study published today in the journal Landscape Research suggests that with the right design, most would.

Previous research on ‘healthy route choices’ has focused on people’s likelihood of walking instead of using transport. But this study examined how likely people are to pick a more challenging route over a conventional one and which design characteristics influenced their choices.

Lead author, Anna Boldina, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture, said: “Even when the increase in level and extent of activity level is modest, when millions of people are using cityscapes every day, those differences can have a major positive impact on public health.”

“Our findings show that pedestrians can be nudged into a wider range of physical activities through minor changes to the urban landscape. We want to help policy makers and designers to make modifications that will improve physical health and wellbeing.”

Boldina began this research after moving from Coimbra in Portugal – where she found herself climbing hills and ancient walls – to London, which she found far less physically challenging.

Working with Dr Paul Hanel from the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Essex, and Professor Koen Steemers from Cambridge, Boldina invited almost 600 UK residents to compare photorealistic images of challenging routes – variously incorporating stepping stones, balancing beams, and high steps – with conventional pavements.

Participants were shown images of challenging and conventional tarmac routes and asked which route they would choose. ̽��ֱ��researchers tested out a range of encouraging / discouraging parameters in different scenarios, including crossing water, shortcuts, unusual sculptures and the presence / absence of a handrail and other people. Participants were asked to score how challenging they thought the route would be from 1 (as easy as walking on level tarmac) to 7 (I would not be able to do it).

Eighty per cent of the study’s participants opted for a challenging route in at least one of the scenarios, depending on perceived level of difficulty and design characteristics. Where a challenging option was shorter than a conventional route, this increased the likelihood of being chosen by 10%. ̽��ֱ��presence of handrails achieved a 12% rise.

Importance for health

̽��ֱ��WHO and NHS recommend at least 150 minutes of ‘moderate’ or 75 minutes of ‘vigorous’ activity spread over a week, including a variety of activities aimed at enhancing bones, muscles, and agility to stay healthy. In addition, adults over 65 are advised to perform strength, flexibility, and balance exercises.

Boldina said: “ ̽��ֱ��human body is a very complex machine that needs a lot of things to keep working effectively. Cycling and swimming are great for your heart and for your leg muscles but do very little for your bone density.”

“To improve cardiovascular health, bone density and balance all at once, we need to add a wider range of exercises into our routine daily walks.”

Psychology of choice

Co-author Dr Paul Hanel said: “Children don’t need much encouragement to try out a balance beam but we wanted to see how adults would respond, and then identify design modifications which made them more likely to choose a challenging route.”

“We found that while embarrassment, anxiety, caution and peer pressure can put some adults off, the vast majority of people can be persuaded to take a more challenging route by paying careful attention to design, safety, difficulty level, location and signage.”

̽��ֱ��proportion of participants who were willing to pick a more challenging route varied from 14% for a particular balance beam route to 78% for a route involving wide, low stepping stones and a log with a handrail. ̽��ֱ��least intimidating routes were found to be those with wide, steady-looking balancing beams and wide steppingstones, especially with the presence of handrails.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that routes that incorporate more difficult challenges, such as obstacle courses and narrow balancing beams, should be placed in areas more likely to be frequented by younger users.

̽��ֱ��participants expressed a range of reasons for picking challenging routes. Unsurprisingly, the study found that challenging routes which also acted as short cuts appealed. Up to 55% of participants chose such routes. ̽��ֱ��researchers also found that the design of pavements, lighting and flowerbeds, as well as signage helped to nudge participants to choose more challenging routes. Many participants (40%) said the sight of other people taking a challenging route encouraged them to do the same.

̽��ֱ��participants who picked conventional routes often had concerns about safety but the introduction of safety measures, such as handrails, increased uptake of some routes. Handrails next to one steppingstones route increased uptake by 12%.

To test whether tendency to choose challenging routes was linked to demographic and personality factors, participants were asked to answer questions about their age, gender, habits, health, occupation, and personality traits (such as sensation seeking or general anxiety).

̽��ֱ��researchers found that people of all levels of activity are equally likely to pick a challenging route. But for the most difficult routes, participants who regularly engaged in strength and balancing exercises were more likely to choose them.

Older participants were as supportive of the concept as younger ones but were less likely to opt for the more challenging routes for themselves. Nevertheless, across all age groups, only a small percentage of participants said they would avoid adventurous options completely.

̽��ֱ��study applies the idea of “Choice Architecture” (making good choices easier and less beneficial choices harder) plus “Fun theory”, a strategy whereby physical activity is made more exciting; as well as some of the key principles of persuasion: social proof, liking, authority, and consistency.

Future work

̽��ֱ��researchers hope to run experiments in physical test sites to see how intentions convert into behaviour, and to measure how changes in habits improve health. In the meantime, Boldina continues to present her findings to policy makers.

Critics might question the affordability and cost effectiveness of introducing ‘Active landscape routes’ in the current economic environment.

In response, the researchers argue that installing stepping stones in a turfed area can be cheaper than laying and maintaining conventional tarmac pavements. They also point out that these measures could save governments far greater sums by reducing demand for health care related to lack of exercise.

Reference

A Boldina et al., ‘Active Landscape and Choice Architecture: Encouraging the use of challenging city routes for fitness’, Landscape Research (2022). DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2022.2142204

Up to 78% of walkers would take a more challenging route featuring obstacles such as balancing beams, stepping stones and high steps, research has found. ̽��ֱ��findings suggest that providing ‘Active Landscape’ routes in urban areas could help tackle an 'inactivity pandemic' and improve health outcomes.

Pedestrians can be nudged into a wider range of physical activities through minor changes to the urban landscape

Anna Boldina

Collage imagining a challenging 'Active Urbanism' route applied to Sermon Lane in London

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Extent of India’s COVID nudge campaign revealed

ta385 — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 07:21:22 +0000

India has reported nearly five million COVID-19 cases and well over 80,000 deaths (as of 17 September 2020), making the country one of the worst hit in the world. But an even greater tragedy may have unfolded had India’s government not used nudge theory to maintain one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns in the first quarter of the year. This is the view of a new study by Ramit Debnath and Dr Ronita Bardhan from Cambridge’s Behaviour and Building Performance Group, Department of Architecture.

Using machine learning and AI-based algorithms to analyse almost 400 government press releases, they show how India nudged across 14 key policy areas to influence the behaviour of 1.3 billion people, including government employees, scientists, health professionals, manufacturers, food suppliers and students to help fight COVID-19. ̽��ֱ��researchers argue that nudges from India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, were particularly important in creating herd effect on lockdown and social distancing norms across the nation.

̽��ֱ��study, published in PLoS ONE, found that the government deployed nudge techniques to tackle a wide range of urgent challenges between 15 January and 14 April 2020. Nudging is a design-based public policy approach which uses positive and negative reinforcements to modify the behaviour of a population.

In January and February, policy nudges were focused on evaluating the risk of incoming travellers from China and extending surveillance at international airports. But the narrative soon shifted to address other pressing concerns. By March, nudges sought to impose new restrictions on travel, discouraging people from visiting crowded and public spaces, and strict social distancing. On 24 March, Modi told the nation that “21 days is critical to breaking the infection cycle… or else the country and your family could be set back 21 years”. ̽��ֱ��next day, the country entered phase 1 of lockdown.

̽��ֱ��government nudged to tackle fake news about the virus and to convince the population to strictly adhere to the rules, use masks and wash hand frequently. At the same time, it conducted surveillance in urban areas using smart technologies that included drones, spatial analysis, low-power Bluetooth mobile phone applications and humanoid robots.

Ramit Debnath said: “Nudge-based policy approaches are crucial in a democratic country like India which has a vast population and geo-spatial divide, high levels of illiteracy and an extremely vulnerable health system.”

Ronita Bardhan added: “ ̽��ֱ��government urgently needed to buy time and it had to bring a diverse population together to fight a common struggle – this was a huge challenge. Our findings show that the government needed much more than scientific data to convince people, they appealed to powerful values including patriotism, family, religion and community.”

̽��ֱ��study highlights the role played by the ‘Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund’ (PM CARES Fund) which was created to nudge the public to make micro-donations and encourage public participation to help tackle the crisis. On 5 April, the Prime Minister nudged people to voluntarily switch off their lights for ten minutes in solidarity with frontline workers. Most of these nudges were made with social media advertisements, SMS forwards and broadcast media.

̽��ֱ��study found that government ministries nudged India’s manufacturing firms to produce PPE, hand sanitiser and masks to meet the national demand, while also seeking to protect the country’s food security and supply chains at a critical time – India’s farmers harvest their winter crops from February to April.

Meanwhile, the government spurred on India’s scientific community to fight the pandemic, releasing funding through the Department of Science and Technology. Research institutions were encouraged to submit proposals to focus on the development of affordable diagnostics, vaccines, antivirals, disease models, and other R&D to study COVID-19.

Scientific innovation during this period included robots for encouraging social distancing in public spaces and healthcare centres; and a contact tracing app (AarogyaSetu) using GPS and Bluetooth. Frequent SMS reminders were used to nudge people to use the app. ̽��ֱ��Ministry of Human Resource Development also nudged the start-up and innovation community in India to participate in the fight for COVID-19 by launching programs like ‘Fight Corona IDEAthon’.

To support education, the government encouraged home-schooling by aggressively advertising the use of the National Digital Library of India. ̽��ֱ��government even harnessed nostalgia to help keep people at home during lockdown by broadcasting popular ‘80s and ‘90s TV shows on the national channel, Doordarshan.

̽��ֱ��study demonstrates how nudge strategies evolved as the crisis unfolded. Between January and the first week of March, for instance, one government ministry (AYUSH) was aggressively nudging people to follow the traditional medicinal practice of Ayurveda and to maintain good health through yoga to increase immunity, while also insisting on disciplined personal hygiene. However, in mid-March, as infection rates increased, the nudges shifted away from traditional treatments to promoting a healthy lifestyle using hashtags like #YOGAathome.

̽��ֱ��researchers used topic modelling, a computational social science method that has its basis in text mining and natural language processing. It automatically analyses text data to determine cluster words for a set of documents.

̽��ֱ��Government started lifting lockdown restrictions on 7 June 2020, and the spread of the virus has since accelerated. But the benefits of the government’s nudge campaign are still being felt, the researchers believe. Ronita Bardhan says: “Behaviour changes encouraged by nudges earlier in the year, including the wearing of masks and social distancing, are still widely maintained across India. These nudges are still helping to save lives.”

̽��ֱ��study does not attempt to assess the success or failure of the Government of India’s policy interventions, rather to understand how context-specific latent nudges were created through policy interventions.

Ramit Debnath is a Gates Cambridge Scholar at Churchill College; Dr Ronita Bardhan is ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer of Sustainability in the Built Environment and a Fellow at Selwyn College.

Reference

R. Debnath R & R. Bardhan, ‘India nudges to contain COVID-19 pandemic: A reactive public policy analysis using machine-learning based topic modelling’, PLoS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238972.

̽��ֱ��Government of India’s use of nudge theory in the first three months of the pandemic helped to tackle the virus on numerous fronts, a new study suggests.

̽��ֱ��government urgently needed to buy time and ... bring a diverse population together to fight a common struggle

Ronita Bardhan

Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

India flag face mask.

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Research unit to help encourage healthier habits launched

gm349 — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:08:11 +0000

̽��ֱ��Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU) at the ̽��ֱ��'s Institute of Public Health was officially launched yesterday, 11 April.

̽��ֱ��aim of the BHRU is to contribute evidence to national and international efforts to help people achieve sustained changes in behaviour that lead to better health outcomes in all social groups. ̽��ֱ��new unit will also help inform the Government’s policy making on behaviour and health by investigating the best ways to assist people to change poor health habits for the better.

Poor diet, lack of physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption are together responsible for the huge burden of chronic disease worldwide. They also contribute to the differences in life expectancy between the poorest and the richest in the UK and elsewhere. But while most people value their health, many persist in behaviour that undermines it.

̽��ֱ��new unit will contribute evidence to help to meet the public health challenge by initially focusing on diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption and looking in particular at our environments - where we live and work - to see what can be changed to prompt people to behave in ways that improve their health for the long term.

Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the Policy Research Unit on behaviour and health at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge says: "Achieving sustained behaviour change that leads to improved health outcomes and reduces inequalities is a key public health challenge.

" ̽��ֱ��new unit brings together a group of excellent researchers to find the methods that are most effective and present best value for money in changing people's behaviour to improve the health of our population. This will help ensure that Government policy decisions can be informed by robust evidence and offer the best value for money."

As part of the unit’s mission to help inform how best to change behaviour, the BHRU recently published a paper on ‘nudging’ (which involves altering environments to prompt healthier behaviour without financial incentives or bans). ̽��ֱ��research, spearheaded by Professor Marteau, found that ‘at present, the evidence to support the view that nudging alone can improve population health is weak’. ̽��ֱ��paper also points out that nudging has the potential to generate harms as well as benefits, particularly if an emphasis on nudging results in a neglect of other, potentially more effective interventions.

̽��ֱ��BHRU is made up of a team of experts from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, MRC Human Nutrition Research, MRC Epidemiology Unit, RAND Europe and the ̽��ֱ�� of East Anglia.

New research unit to focus on how to change behaviours responsible for the majority of premature deaths worldwide.

̽��ֱ��new unit brings together a group of excellent researchers to find the methods that are most effective and present best value for money in changing people's behaviour to improve the health of our population.

Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the BHRU

Martin Cathrae from Flickr

Vegetables

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