Group incentives refer to structure where an individual's likelihood or size of reward is influenced by others. The intention is to leverage positive peer pressure by causing compliant participants to influence less compliant participants to improve their behavior.
For example, sales teams may be offered a bonus based on an office's collective revenue generation or provided all individuals meet a baseline level of performance. Similarly a multi-site franchise may offer an incentive for whichever location improves their performance the most over the prior month.
Identity priming refers to attempting to influence someone's behavior by emphasizing their being part of to a certain group or being a certain type of person. These often leverage social norms—particularly injunctive norms—and introjected regulation.
For example, voter turnout campaigns often emphasize the person's membership to the community or previous voting history in reminder letters.
Skill coaching simply refers to guiding a person to acquire a new behavior or set of behaviors, often by scaling the information and challenge level with their growing ability.
Examples of this might include teaching someone to cook healthy foods or training them in various self-regulation techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy. This coaching may be done by an individual or automated through digital experiences.
Rules of thumb refer to simplifation heuristics used in dealing with uncertainty, situations where tracking behaviors can be onerous, or areas where one-size-fits-all approaches may not be successful. They can be a useful tool to reduce the cognitive load of complying with a new behavior.
For example, a person may find it easier to "eat out at restaurants only 4 times per month" rather than "limit monthly restaurant spending to $200." Similarly, avoiding eating certain types of foods, e.g. fried foods or high-calorie drinks, may be easier to recall and comply with than hitting a daily calorie goal.
Feedback entails providing qualitative or quantitative information about a behavior's performance or consequences.
Performative information might include data on how a person's current diet tracks with nutrition recommendations or how their home power consumption compares with nearby households.
Feedback on outcomes may include information about relative cancer risk based on current lifestyle factors or calculated net worth in 20 years based on the person's current savings rate and investment returns.
Social benchmarking refers to comparing a person's behavior, trends, or status to others. Often, merely providing data on others can change behavior by leveraging social norms.
For example, letters comparing homeowners' use of electricity with peers were found to significantly reduce the amount of energy used by high-consumption households compared to non-comparison messages.
Social benchmarking refers to comparing a person's behavior, trends, or status to others. Often, merely providing data on others can change behavior by leveraging social norms.
For example, letters comparing homeowners' use of electricity with peers were found to significantly reduce the amount of energy used by high-consumption households compared to non-comparison messages.
Goal setting simply refers to a person choosing a specific result to aim at achieving. This might include an outcome (e.g. a goal weight) or a behavior (e.g. exercise 90 minutes 3 times a week).