all behaviours (panel a),
health behaviours (panel b) and
environmental behaviours (panel c).
In all panels, individual targets of change are presented on the left and social-structural targets of change are presented on the right. Vertically, targets of change are organized from least to most effective based on the average effect sizes for each behavioural target, and grouped based on whether effects are negligible, small, medium or large.
Social, environmental, political and economic challenges — such as pandemics and epidemics, environmental degradation and community violence — require taking stock of how to promote behaviours that benefit individuals and society at large.
Multidisciplinary meta-analyses of the individual and social-structural determinants of behaviour (for example, beliefs and norms, respectively) and the efficacy of behavioural change interventions that target them shows that, across domains, interventions designed to change individual determinants can be ordered by increasing impact as those targeting knowledge, general skills, general attitudes, beliefs, emotions, behavioural skills, behavioural attitudes and habits.
Social-structural determinants of behaviour include legal and administrative sanctions, trustworthiness, injunctive norms, monitors and reminders, descriptive norms, material incentives, social support and access.
Individual determinants of behaviour include knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, skills and habits.
The published review suggests that across domains, knowledge, general skills, general attitudes, beliefs, legal and administrative sanctions, and trustworthiness have negligible effects as targets of intervention; emotions, behavioural skills, behavioural attitudes, injunctive norms, monitors and reminders, descriptive norms and material incentives have small effects; habits and social support have medium effects; and access has large effects.
Researchers should also study naive theories about behavioural change among policymakers and their constituents.
If policymakers believe that knowledge is fundamental to behavioural change, they will continue to implement well-intended but unsuccessful interventions.
Likewise, if policymakers consider all targets of change as equally attractive possibilities without considering their relative efficacy, their choices are also likely to be misguided.
Understanding these naive conceptualizations and how they translate into behavioural change initiatives is critical to ensuring that evidence-based findings similar to those provided here shape the practise of behavioural change.
Policymakers should focus on interventions that enable individuals to circumvent obstacles to enacting desirable behaviours rather than targeting salient but ineffective determinants of behaviour such as knowledge and beliefs.
Surtil : 