Applying behavioural insights to reduce fraud, error and debt

The Behavioural Insights Team of the Cabinet Office has published a paper on fraud, debt and error. It aims to represent a new way of doing policy: by actively testing ideas with public bodies, the team say they have been able to demonstrate effects that could save hundreds of millions of pounds.

Although mainly looking at issues to do with taxation, payment of fines, driving license applications etc, there is a section in Part 2 dedicated to single person discount of council tax, and it would be quite surprising if some of this thinking did not bleed over into the arena of social security.

Part 1 details some of the key insights from behavioural research of what could be described as best practice:

Insight 1. Make it easy: Make it as straightforward as possible for people to pay tax or debts, for example by pre-populating a form with information already held.
Insight 2. Highlight key messages: Draw people’s attention to important information or actions required of them, for example by highlighting them upfront in a letter.
Insight 3. Use personal language: Personalise language so that people understand why a message or process is relevant to them.
Insight 4. Prompt honesty at key moments: Ensure that people are prompted to be honest at key moments when filling in a form or answering questions.
Insight 5. Tell people what others are doing: Highlight the positive behaviour of others, for instance that ‘9 out of 10 people pay their tax on time’.
Insight 6. Reward desired behaviour: Actively incentivise or reward behaviour that saves time or money.
Insight 7. Highlight the risk and impact of dishonesty: Emphasise the impact of fraud or late payment on public services, as well as the risk of audit and the consequences for those caught.

Part 2 then goes onto make 8 suggestions for possible randomised controlled trials to explore the effectiveness of these insights.

Behavioural Insights Team publish paper on fraud, error and debt