Tackling 3 key barriers to healthy eating using Behavioural Science 2.0
Obesity is a significant and growing problem in the UK, as well as around the world.
Over one in four UK adults are now obese – up from less than one in six in the early 1990s. The annual cost to the NHS of obesity is over £11bn per year.
Despite the recent rise of obesity medication, it therefore remains critical to try to fully understand, and address behavioural challenges associated with obesity such as healthy eating and exercising.
This article introduces the new Behavioural Science 2.0.
It then illustrates how Behavioural Science 2.0 can help us reconsider and improve how we think about, and try to influence three key barriers to healthy eating:
1. Time
2. Stress
3. Taste preferences
What is Behavioural Science 2.0?
At the heart of Behavioural Science 2.0 is the idea of a system of behaviours.
First, this has nothing to do with the popular but highly contested System 1 and 2 parts of the brain brought into the public consciousness by Daniel Kahneman.
Instead, it is something that describes how multiple different behaviours contribute to an over-arching goal.
Central to this is the critical fact that many important behavioural goals such as healthy eating involve multiple behaviours.
Where has Behavioural Science 2.0 come from?
Behavioural Science 2.0 has come about through the fusion of behavioural science and systems thinking.
In the latter, lots of work has, independently of behavioural science, explored systems in for example supply chains. The fusion is therefore intended to bring together the best aspects of the two disciplines.
And lastly, why do we need Behavioural Science 2.0?
Behavioural science can now be said to be now entering its teenage years. Over the last decade, many real-world studies have mined behavioural science for insights to help develop the most effective behaviour change strategies.
Unfortunately, success levels in actually changing behaviour have been variable at best.
One influential meta study analysing 126 studies attributed disappointing overall outcomes to the fact that most strategies tended to target one behaviour only (as opposed to targeting multiple behaviours).
Off the back of this, a consensus is growing that behavioural science needs to get better at exploring and embracing the idea of a system of behaviours.
Returning to healthy eating, what are the main barriers?
Barriers to healthy eating tend to be wide-ranging but the following are regularly cited in academic research:
1. Time
2. Stress
3. Taste preferences
However, while the insights above seem plausible, how would policymakers turn these fairly generic insights into effective behaviour change strategies? For example, alleviating stress, or inventing more time for people are not simple fixes!
Fortunately, features within the idea of a system of behaviours help us interrogate the above, and approach the challenge in a more effective way...
First, take the Time barrier.
Considering the possibility, as described above, that multiple behaviours may contribute to the goal of healthy eating helps us to think more deeply about this barrier.
For example:
Are people short of time to prepare healthy food?
Alternatively, are they short of time to shop for it in the first place?
Or is it something else connected to time?
Considering the idea of multiple behaviours contributing to an overall behavioural goal can help turn a seemingly insurmountable barrier like Time into something less daunting.
Second up is Stress.
As well as thinking more specifically, as above, about different ways Stress might potentially inhibit healthy eating (e.g. might it inhibit preparing healthy food, shopping for it etc?), Behavioural Science 2.0 suggests also exploring other connected behaviours – or “root causes”.
What does this mean?
Well, when it comes to Stress for example, it means exploring other behaviours that could be contributing to Stress, including (but not limited to):
1. Working
2. Parenting
3. Relationship issues
Exploring the “root causes” of generic sounding barriers like Stress can provide valuable insights into how they might be effectively addressed.
The final barrier is Taste preferences.
Similarly to above, it is first helpful to explore how these may be inhibiting people from doing different key behaviours. For example, how are taste preferences affecting shopping for healthy food – or preparing healthy food?
Further, Behavioural Science 2.0 also suggests exploring how others’ behaviours may also be having an impact.
Here, other people (e.g. partner) and / or organisations (e.g. advertisers) may also be having a negative influence on taste preferences by for example endorsing other foods (e.g. fast food).
While others’ behaviours (particularly those of organisations) are often more challenging to tackle, by knowing of their impact we can at least try to provide individuals with the skills to counter them.
Conclusion
Focusing on the idea of a system of behaviours helps us to get the deepest possible understanding…
…something which ultimately helps us create more effective, multi-faceted behaviour change interventions.
Further, as well as helping us to better plan, execute and take actions off the back of primary research, Behavioural Science 2.0 and the idea of a system of behaviours is also invaluable in helping us uncover new insights, hypotheses, and knowledge gaps from existing research.
If you’d like to learn more about systems of behaviour, sign up to our brand new course delivered through the Market Research Society.