Concerns about Nudges
A little essay I wrote, "Concerns about Nudges," for the Initiative for Science, Society, and Policy is now online.
ECOATM Kiosk as Potential Nudge
In an Atlantic article Nicholas Jackson describes a new electronics recycle machine that he describes as an eco-nudge.
EcoATM Kiosks Turn Old Cell Phones and iPods Into Cash
Feb 27 2011, 8:15 AM ET By Nicholas Jackson 4
More than 80 percent of the televisions, computer products and cell phones that reached the end of their life in 2007 were disposed of, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with most of them getting tossed into landfills. Only 18 percent of the 2.25 million tons of electronic products were recycled. There are a lot of reasons for those numbers, but the primary cause is, I suspect, convenience. It's just so much easier to toss your old cell phone into the garbage than it is to figure out how to dispose of it properly. But what if you could nudge people, Cass Sunstein-style, to do the right thing?
Enter ecoATM, a San Diego, Calif.-based start-up that is building kiosks for consumer electronics. Just like the Coinstar machine at your local grocery store or the Redbox movie rental location where you pick up and drop off DVDs to watch at home, ecoATM has designed a unit that accepts electronics and spits out cold, hard cash (or you can choose to receive a coupon or gift card or to donate your return to a charitable organization). See the image at right to get an idea of what the machine looks like.
For the past 18 months or so, there have only been about a dozen ecoATMs in the field, most based around the company's headquarters. But thanks to a $14.4 million round of financing completed earlier this month, ecoATM is preparing for rapid expansion. "Our plan is to add hundreds of machines over the next year and then thousands the following year," Anita Giani, ecoATM's media contact told me over e-mail.
The idea is simple: You're going to visit the grocery store anyway. If you know you're going to get some money back, there's an incentive to dig that old cell phone out from the junk drawer in which you've been hoarding all of your outdated electronics. Grab it and toss it in your bag when you head out the door. The next time you encounter an ecoATM, toss the product into the machine and wait a few seconds while, in real time, the machine searches to see how much the product is worth on secondary markets. "[W]e perpetually scour, compare, and adjust pricing to be competitive with all varieties of competition including the specialized web buy-back site and POS buy-back systems," Giana wrote. "On a majority of phone models we actually offer higher prices than any existing competitors."
Phones, right now, are ecoATM's focus, along with iPods. The company, Giani assured me, has successfully trialed the collection of video games, tablet PCs, laptop computers and eReaders over the past 18 months. "We will add categories as appropriate and as our technology roadmap allows but the eventual goal is to provide a one-stop system for all types of electronics and eWaste," Giani wrote.
As the company grows and the number of kiosks deployed multiplies, we could eventually see targeted systems that are specially tailored to the location in which they reside. "It is possible that we could configure specific features for specific store settings," Giani wrote. "For example, ink cartridge take-back in an office supply store but not in a mall setting. Or game take-back in a mall but not in an office supply setting." For now, though, this is at the bottom of ecoATM's to-do list. Before any tailoring is done, the company needs to reach a critical size where potential customers are aware of the kiosks and think twice before tossing out their old gadgets.
Failed Nudges: Perhaps the Science isn’t Sufficiently Developed
An article from The Guardian that suggests the lack of nudge-oriented policies may be due to the "experimental" nature of nudging.
'Nudge unit' not guaranteed to work, says Oliver Letwin
Minister's admission follows report that Behavioural Insight Team has failed to convince any Whitehall department to use its ideas
Oliver Letwin said there was no hard evidence the 'nudge unit', which costs £520,000 a year, would succeed. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty ImagesOliver Letwin, the minister for government policy, has admitted that a £500,000 "nudge unit" formed to apply the behavioural economics theory that people's habits can be improved without regulation is experimental and there is no concrete evidence that it will work.
Letwin told a committee of peers in the House of Lords that the unit, which is supposed to influence Whitehall policymaking, is not guaranteed to work, but that it was low cost with "almost zero risk" involved. The Cabinet Office, in which the group is based, confirmed that the nudge unit has seven government employees and costs £520,000 a year.
The unit, known formally as the Behavioural Insight Team, is run by David Halpern, a former adviser in Tony Blair's strategy unit who is paid £100,000 a year. Advice is being given by Richard Thaler, the Chicago professor generally recognised as popularising nudge theory – the idea that governments can design environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves and society.
Letwin told the Lords science committee, which is conducting an inquiry into behaviour change: "It is of course open to question whether any of this will have any effect whatsoever. I don't want to pretend that behavioural science is a sufficiently developed science to give us complete confidence or even sort of 95% confidence that any given technique will produce given results. It isn't that way. As a matter of fact the science of investigating regulation isn't sufficiently developed to give you that either. But I think it is extremely clear that it is pretty cost-free to do these things, pretty straight forward to do them so that if they don't produce any result we won't have lost much."
The group is overseen by a steering group chaired by Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary. Halpern has a deputy director and five junior staff. The Cabinet Office said the £520,000 covered payroll, fixed overheads (desks, telephones, IT) and all other costs.
The disclosure follows a critical National Audit Office report on regulation that said the nudge unit had failed to convince a single Whitehall department to make use of its ideas so far. "The Cabinet Office told us that it has not been consulted by departments to date about possible alternatives to regulation at the assessment stage," it said.
Letwin told the committee that the team were working on five key projects: how to improve organ donations, stopping smoking, car labelling to make energy efficiency more conspicuous, food hygiene and a charitable project to improve donations. The unit is looking at a gift scheme in which consumers are offered the chance to donate their change to charity to make casual giving easier.
He said the common features of the schemes were that they involved "prompted choice" rather than regulating.
Last month Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister who works closely with Letwin, argued that government should be allowed to experiment and fail more than it does in order to attempt more ambitious projects.
He said: "I think if you have an excessive blame culture, where for every failure there has to be a scapegoat, every failure is deemed to be a culpable failure, then you have an environment, a culture, in which failure is not recognised, failure is hidden, and you become the prisoner of sunk costs. Good organisations cut their losses early, learn from the things that have been tried and haven't worked, and move on."
Nudge: A Political Bust in UK?
Today's Telegraph article, "Whitehall won't be 'nudged' finds National Audit Office," written by Richard Tyler suggests so.
"David Cameron's "Behavioural Insight Team" – billed as the answer to achieving social change without resorting to regulation – has failed to convince a single Whitehall department to make use of its services, a National Audit Office report reveals.
The so-called "Nudge unit", set up last July with seven full time staff at a cost of £500,000 a year, has instead been sidelined, the report finds.
Dozens of new regulations have been drafted by civil servants without considering alternative ways of getting businesses and individuals to alter their behaviour.
The failure of the nudge unit to influence the behaviour of Whitehall officials will undermine its credibility.
The Prime Minister has placed significant store by the theory espoused in "Nudge", a book co-authored by Chicago University professor Richard Thaler, who has since become a Cabinet Office adviser.
However, the NAO found little Whitehall interest in the "nudge unit". "The Cabinet Office told us that it has not been consulted by departments to date about possible alternatives to regulation at the assessment stage," it said.
The report, signed off as accurate by the Cabinet Office in January, highlighted how Whitehall set out plans to introduce over 730 new regulations in the last two years, with the typical business now subject to as many as 60 regulations, covering employment, planning, health and safety and industry sector specific rules.
Separately, the Government has announced a delay in the introduction of the right for the employees of small companies to request time for training to improve their skills.
The right has been available to employees of large organisations with 250 or more employees since April last year."
Agency & Nudging
In Amy Gutman's recent Huffington Post blog entry, "Message to Facebook: I'm Taking my Happiness Back," she offers the following mixed-message, unaware of its contradictions:
1. She embraces the view of choice architecture articulated in Nudge: "The bottom line: Everything matters. Our environments have a huge impact on the decisions we make. In a similar vein, we'd be smart to give serious thought to the "choice architecture" of our online lives."
2. She repeats the old instrumentalist platitude that technological outcomes always boil down to personal decisions, and that agency resides solely in humans, not in machines.
2a. She writes: "Strangely lost in the debate is the fact that there is no single Facebook experience. We -- not Facebook -- determine who our friends are, how often we see their posts, how we engage with them, and the myriad other experiences that constitute "our" Facebook. We -- not Facebook -- have the agency here. Facebook is what we make it...
2b. She also writes: "One curious aspect of the ever thought-provoking "Alone Together" is how Turkle endows technology with figurative agency even as she stresses the (valid) point that machines can't want or feel. "Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies," she writes in her introduction. At the same time, her technology-using humans are an oddly powerless bunch, more acted upon than actors. For example, reporting teens' accounts of their online lives, Turkle notes that some say they "find themselves being 'cruel.'" Another teen explains that he has no choice but to text and drive: "If I get a Facebook message or something posted on my wall... I have to see it. I have to." What's lost here is the choice point: Kids don't simply "find themselves" acting cruel, and they don't "have to" text while driving. Rather, they -- and we -- make choices that lead to these actions. True, teens are notoriously lacking in impulse control, but isn't that all the more reason to home in on this issue, to come up with structural supports that would "nudge" them towards healthier behaviors? That's where adults come in."
The problem is that #1 and #2 are incompatible. Choice architecture is powerful precisely because agency can be distributed humans and technological systems.
Cyborg Professor’s Body Rejects Implant
From Marc Parry's "Health Problems Force Professor to Pull Camera from Back of Head" in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
An NYU professor triggered a debate about campus privacy in November when he decided to implant a camera in the back of his head for a year-long art project.
Now the professor, Wafaa Bilal, faces a much bigger obstacle than students who might not want their pictures taken. His body is rejecting part of the implanted device.
The Iraqi-born artist underwent surgery on Friday to remove a section of the camera apparatus, which is rigged to snap a picture every 60 seconds and publish the image on a Web site set up for the project. The pictures are also displayed on monitors in a physical exhibit at a museum in Doha, Qatar.
“I’m determined to continue with it,” Mr. Bilal, an assistant arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, said on Monday.
Under its initial configuration, the camera was mounted on three posts. Each led to a titanium base that was implanted between Mr. Bilal’s skin and skull. The procedure was done by a body-modification artist at a tattoo shop in Los Angeles. But the setup caused constant pain, because his body rejected one of the posts, despite treatment with antibiotics and steroids. So Mr. Bilal had that post surgically removed, leaving the other two intact.
Once the wound heals, Mr. Bilal hopes to figure out a different setup and remount a lighter camera. For now, though, he’s carrying on the project by tying the camera to the back of his neck.
The professor has offered several explanations for what motivated such an extreme piece of art. The inspiration comes from his chaotic past: Mr. Bilal fled Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, living in refugee camps in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia before coming to the United States. In retrospect, he wished for a record of places he left behind.
He also sees the project’s mundane, daily images as a way of slowing life down and calling attention to the present. “Most of the time, we don’t live in the places we live in,” he said. “We don’t exist in the city we exist in. Perhaps physically we exist, but mentally we are somewhere else.” Yet another explanation: The project points to the future—a future where, as Mr. Bilal sees it, communication devices will become part of our bodies.
But why not simply wear the camera, rather than implant it?
“It’s a performance,” Mr. Bilal said. “With the performance comes endurance. But also it’s a commitment. And I didn’t feel that strapping something around my neck would be the same way I’m committed to the project as mounting it to the top of my head.”
Nudge and The Public Health Responsibility Deal
The Telegraph article, "Employers Have a 'Duty' to Nudge Staff into Shape," offers a summary of how nudge theory underlies the UK's Public Health Responsibility Deal.
Employers have a 'duty’ to nudge staff into shape
Department of Health is pushing voluntary workplace and industry health pledges as part of Whitehall plans to improve the country's wellbeing
Employers are being asked to take centre stage in the Government’s efforts to “nudge” the population to become more healthy.
The Department of Health wants companies to formally promote public health messages around alcohol consumption, drug use, fitness levels and eating habits.
Restaurants and food retailers in particular are being targeted to show the calorie content of meals on menus and packaging so that customers are “empowered to make the right choice”.
Under the proposals companies signing a “pledge” will have to self-report each year, setting out what they have achieved.
The initiative called the Public Health Responsibility Deal is designed as an alternative to regulation as is part of a wider Whitehall plan to encourage voluntarily changes in public behaviour around health and wellbeing, the environment, paying taxes and philanthropy.
Dozens of large companies, charity groups and social policy experts have joined five working groups at the Department of Health that are examining issues like the nutritional labelling of food, the promotion of exercise and tackling excessive alcohol consumption.
It is understood business groups support the workplace health promotion but some are concerned over the shift from advocating best practice to setting down specific requirements. They fear that as large companies seek to comply with the pledges they will be turned into compulsory measures that are passed down through supply chains.
“I can’t think of many employers who will lecture their staff about how much they drink at the weekend,” said one source.
Employers may also be asked to sign up to an overarching pledge on improving the health of their workforce without knowing fully what will be expected of them as the working groups may not finalise their proposals in time for the launch, which is expected in the next month.
The Department of Health said companies alongside charities and public health experts had a “huge role” to play in improving the country’s health.
“We firmly believe that collective voluntary effort by these organisations can deliver real progress, more quickly than regulation. If this does not work, we will consider the case for introducing change through regulation,” said a spokesman.
The Department is working with David Cameron’s Behavioural Insight Team, which is advised by Richard Thaler, a Chicago professor who is recognised as popularising “nudge” theory. Nudge is based on libertarian paternalism and the idea that governments can design environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves and society.
Nick Clegg has said: “The challenge is to find ways to encourage people to act in their own and in society’s long-term interest, while respecting individual freedom.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has six responsibility deals covering everything from waste packaging to landfill. Some 48 companies including Coca-Cola Enterprises and Proctor & Gamble are backing the so-called Courtauld 2 agreement on packaging while 576 companies have backed plans to halve the amount of construction waste going to landfill by 2012. Separate agreements cover initiatives in clothing, milk production, windows and plasterboard.
Defra said it plans to “explore voluntary responsibility deals on waste among businesses” and a spokesman added: “We are currently exploring areas such as hospitality, paper, and packaging recycling. We will say more as part of the Waste Review in May, and will continue developing ideas with businesses and trade bodies.”
Nudging with Wifi Enabled Scale
The Telegraph just ran another nudge article, "Giving Up is So Very Hard to Do." Highlights include reference to use of a wifi enabled scale to share information and stick to weight loss pledge:
"In policy circles, behavioural economics has become extraordinarily fashionable, largely because its insights are presented as evidence-based and academically rigorous. Stickk.com cashes in on the fact that pledges made in public are more likely to be honoured than those kept private. Continual external monitoring is a strong deterrent against dishonesty: users nominate a “referee” who polices their behaviour by checking the scales or counting up cigarette butts. Plus, to seal the deal, committed users can add friends to their online pledge; or, to put it more brutally, widen the circle of witnesses if and when they renege on their word.
The reason this works is that shame, especially when coupled to the prospect of losing hard cash, is a powerful incentive for changing behaviour. One of the website’s co-founders, Professor Ian Ayres, a lawyer and economist at Yale, is the author of Carrots and Sticks, a bestselling book on the principles of behavioural economics. He suggests naming an “anti-charity” – one that you wouldn’t think of supporting – as the beneficiary of your broken promise: a person is less likely to break their pledge if the money goes to an undeserving cause. In the US, opponents of gun ownership might try harder to lose those extra pounds if their forfeit was heading to the National Rifle Association; here, a Tory supporter could motivate himself by setting up a donation to Ed Miliband’s constituency association.
Interestingly, Prof Ayres practises what he preaches: he has a long-standing pact with one of the site’s three co-founders, Professor Dean Karlan, to keep their weight below certain levels. Each checks the other’s weight, with $1,000 at stake each week. “[Prof Karlan] has a credible history of taking money from a friend who failed to live up to a contract commitment,” Prof Ayres explains on stickK.com. In fact, Prof Karlan once pocketed a forfeit of $15,000 from a university friend who didn’t honour his commitment contract to lose weight. Prof Karlan had no qualms about taking the windfall: “This payment was an investment in his ongoing health. Had I refused to accept it, no future contracts would ever work.” Prof Ayres also uses a set of Wi-Fi-enabled scales that regularly tweets his weight (twitter.com/ianweight), so that he can be seen to be keeping below 185lb."
Meat Eating Furniture
NPR just ran a story on the designers of the "carnivorous clock"-- a device that converts the biomass of flies into energy. It also discusses the "mouse trap coffee table": "By placing crumbs on top, perhaps left there during a canape-laden soiree, mice are attracted to climb up the hole in its over size leg. When sensors detect that a mouse is standing on the trapdoor in the center, this door opens, and the mouse falls into a microbial fuel cell housed under the table where it gets digested and converted into energy to power the sensors and trapdoor."
Should we find meat eating machines creepy, and worry that that another step has been taken towards creating a future in which people are used as batteries, or breathe easy by thinking of analogues, like the Venus fly trap and compost piles?
