Can public agencies succeed in changing individual behaviour to make society greener, healthier, more caring, less anti-social?

Increasingly, local councils, health and other public bodies are trying to do this - because desirable social outcomes (or specific targets such as increasing participation in sports) are not simply a question of doing more of the same and because in future there will be less money for the public sector to do things.

The Capital Ambition guide to behaviour change rounds up new thinking and research from behavioural economics and other disciplines, and highlights ways to make these insights useful to practitioners. It also presents case studies of initiatives already underway in London that are using behaviour change approaches - from promoting sustainable travel to tackling knife crime.

The guide is a tool for those who will develop policy for, plan and implement behaviour change interventions. Key messages include -

• The new insights being applied to behaviour change in existing and further experimentation offer great potential to meet pressing social problems
• Public managers need to learn to recognise and work with the wide range of external, internal and social factors and motivations that shape behaviour
• Segmentation is key: understanding and targeting different groups (not just young and old and other demographics but also degrees of barriers or motivation)
• Behaviour change is complex, needs multiple approaches and there are no quick fixes.

The guide is work-in-progress of the London Collaborative - a programme funded by Capital Ambition which aims to build innovation and capacity to meet longer term challenges across London's public sector.

We developed this work with participants from boroughs across London and it reflects their insights, including the need to draw on the experience of staff and to change how public sector organisations work. The document includes tools to support this as well as checklists for designing behaviour change interventions and methods of evaluating them.

It is not the ‘final word' on behaviour change and we hope to add more case studies and information on ‘what works' as current pilots and experiments are evaluated.

The guide was written by the Young Foundation and the Office for Public Management as part of the London Collaborative. An updated version will be printed and made available in May 2010.

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