Talk about political mandate
Steering Board
Academic advisory panel
Add something on sunset clause?
Key objectives?
In a bad labour market (2012), jobseekers were 5% points more likely to get into work… now being rolled out nationally
In a bad labour market (2012), jobseekers were 5% points more likely to get into work… now being rolled out nationally
Press were initially sceptical
Ben Goldacre in particular:
So here is my fantasy. We sack the Behavioural Insights Team – all they’ll do is overextrapolate from behavioural economics research – and open a Number 10 Policy Trials unit instead.
The blue bars show the effect in the overall population. The blue bars show the effect on people with income tax debts of more than £30,000.
The two messages we tested were:
[Public gain] “Paying tax means we all gain from vital public services like the NHS, roads, and schools.”
[Public loss] “Not paying tax means we all lose out on vital public services like the NHS, roads, and schools.”
Overall, there was a small (but significant) increase in payments in the overall population. Interestingly, men responded more to the loss frame.
The effects were much larger (up to 19 percentage points) in the large-debt population. Moreover, there was a statistically significant effect of the loss frame in this population.
The larger effect may be because the message is more credible for people who owe more: £30,000 could realistically make a difference to a school. (Note that people with larger debts are actually LESS likely to pay overall, all things being equal.)
This points towards the need to segment messages for maximum effect. However, it’s worth noting that most of the messages we tested worked well across most groups (there was little heterogeneity in the grand scheme of things).