Public spaces fundamentally matter because they are where communities meet on a free and equal basis. A good public realm helps us lead happier, healthier lives. But as councils find cuts biting harder and harder, taking care of the public realm is getting more and more difficult.
Cleaning up litter, fly tipping and dog mess is time consuming, unpleasant and costly. Would it not be far better to reduce or even end these antisocial behaviours in the first place? This was the starting point of our recent report Park life, street life: managing demand in the public realm. How can hard-pressed councils move from cleaning up after bad behaviours to preventing them?
Keeping streets clean takes a nudge in the right direction
For a long time there has been a focus on enforcement and education. Telling people they shouldn’t litter and punishing them for doing so. But these strategies have probably reached the bounds of their usefulness, and in some cases may even prove to be counterproductive (there is evidence that messages like 'too many people are littering' actually makes littering a social norm which increases its prevalence!).
We looked instead at how behavioural insights – or nudges – could be used to encourage better behaviours in the public realm. When surveying this we found a number of examples across local government, from smart Bin 'wraps' in Rochford to posters discouraging dog fouling in Wirral.
These used sophisticated insights into how human thought processes work, drawing on social incentives in the case of the bin wrap (where fuller bins and less street litter meant more money would go to charity) and social norming in the case of the dog fouling (where the posters had bright, night lit eyes to give people the sense they were being watched). Both experiments showed significant improvements.
The problem now is scaling up these achievements. These innovative councils have set the pace, but the examples they have set are not being followed up in a coherent way across local government. When we looked at why, there was a real sense that while the value of behavioural insights is recognised, councils do not feel confident that they have the knowledge and skills to move from their traditional enforcement approach to this in a way that will work.
Few councils have dedicated resources for behavioural insight. When they do have an interest it will usually be because a passionate individual has pursued it, brought in and developed the expertise needed. However, this can often fall into a silo, with insights discovered in one department not shared more widely or embedded further into the organisation as a whole.
To ensure this, both political interest and senior leadership are key. Those experimenting with new insights must be able to do so without fear of failure – indeed failure is often a vital part of the learning of any experiment. Culturally, testing and re-testing of ideas and methods should be supported and encouraged as councils look to develop different approaches.
Behavioural approaches – or nudges – have a great deal to offer councils in helping them to intervene earlier, more successfully and more economically in their public realm and ultimately helping to keep this safe, clean and attractive for their citizens.
Paul O’Brien, chief executive of APSE, and Emma Burnell, head of external affairs at NLGN, explain the core findings of new research which explores how councils can manage demand differently in the public realm.