Introduction

Balancing state intervention and personal responsibility is one of the enduring challenges of public policy. Controversies around the causes and remedies of deprivation, the regulation of public behaviour, the provision of public services and the solutions to collective problems all revolve, to some extent, around finding an appropriate balance between government activism and individual responsibility. One current manifestation of this debate in public policy focuses on attempts to engender ‘behaviour change’ in a diverse range of policy areas. Although behaviour change policies are not new, there appears to be a momentum in the current effort to turn broad policy discourse about what it is to be a responsible citizen into concrete and deliverable policy programmes (for examples, Halpern et al, 2004; APSC, 2007; Lewis, 2007; Knott et al, 2008; O’Leary, 2008).

The appeal to policy makers of behaviour change interventions is that they purport to offer solutions where problems seem intractable or where the political and/or administrative costs of alternative policies are too high. However, doubts remain about the efficacy of behaviour change policies, about the administrative capacity of governance to successfully deliver them and about how comfortable we, in a liberal society, should be to accept government interference in citizens’ values, attitudes and decision-making processes. If there is more to the behaviour change agenda than think tank noise, these doubts require some examination.

This chapter explores behaviour change policy on the ground, using evidence from four empirical projects conducted by the authors aimed at changing citizen behaviour. The chapter starts by briefly reviewing what is meant by behaviour change policy. It then examines four behaviour change interventions with a particular focus on the citizens’ experience of their interaction with governance networks. It looks at the results of the projects and assesses their efficacy. These examples are used to draw out some key issues in successful implementation of behaviour change policies, exploring questions around the capacity of institutions to deliver policies effectively. We also reflect on whether the interventions can be characterised as empowering or whether citizens are simply being nagged by an overbearing state.

The governance of public behaviour

The label ‘behaviour change’ has been adopted in the policy literature for a collection of interventions that are based primarily on persuasive mechanisms.