Jesse graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2022 with a first-class MA(Hons) in Psychology and Economics. Throughout her degree, Jesse studied the design and testing of interventions to affect behaviour for the public good. Her dissertation explored, in a laboratory setting, how the presentation of information (on voluntary climate actions) to be framed as a loss or a gain could influence cooperation. Her MRes thesis used Twitter data and methods from computational psychology to explore the role of political signalling in opposition to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
Upon graduating, Jesse recognised that the UK has made significant steps in reducing carbon emissions through technological advances, but relatively little through demand reduction. At the same time, emissions in the transport sector remain stubbornly high and transport behaviour difficult to change. Hence, she joined AAPS CDT to contribute to reducing demand-side emissions in the transport sector, through behavioural interventions.
Within Behavioural Science Public Policy, there has been a large focus on changing behaviour at the individual level, within certain contexts. This has not achieved the rapid and transformative change required to hit Net Zero by 2030. New approaches are required that target large swathes of the population; but what does this look like? How might this reasonably be achieved?
Organisations are a good point of intervention for behavioural policymakers. Pragmatically, organisational policy is less politicised than public policy, it is more flexible to the local population and context, and organisations can implement changes faster than the public sector can. They may also be effective at behaviour change for several reasons. Organisations are able to influence the choice environment, or the ‘mid-stream’ in the Behavioural Insight Team’s model. This is very important for modal shift, which is highly influenced by infrastructure and habits. Organisations have the additional benefit of having access to key information about moments of change (such as employees starting a new job, retirement, changing home or paternity leave) which are crucial times to change habits. Organisations also have the power to tackle social change through their roles as influencers of employees, the community and the supply chain.
Why would an organisation implement these interventions (workplace travel plans and corporate travel management)? How do we encourage millions of businesses to implement them? Larger organisations are often required to do so due to planning laws, but the 5.5 million SMEs in the UK have no such incentive. Regulations would be heavy-handed and add additional burden to these businesses, not the least that they are highly unlikely for scope 3 emissions. Existing studies suggest that organisations implement WTP are motivated by personal values and commitment to the community (although this evidence is mixed), yet they are hindered by lack of time, knowledge, and finances. These barriers and invisible nature of workplace travel plans may re-enforce a status-quo or ‘social norm’. This may also be symptomatic of a large pluralistic ignorance (a shared mis-perception of how others’ think or behave) existing among firms. What interventions might break this impasse and lead to a social tipping point? What would good business support look like for the implementation of this intervention? Jess's thesis focuses on the transport domain given it generates 26% of the UK’s total emissions, it is very difficult to change, and scope 3 among SMEs is largely neglected.
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