The University of Cambridge has announced it will be leading a new large scale research programme to investigate ways to ‘nudge’ people towards healthier behaviours including alcohol use.
Many will note the nudge concept is not particularly new; policy initiatives focused on changing choice architecture to influence consumer's choices have been adopted across behaviours from tax payments to energy efficiency. Supermarkets and businesses have of course been studying and designing retail environments to alter consumer behaviour well before the buzz for nudge policy saw the establishment of a Governmental Behavioural Insight Team and Public Health Responsibility Deal in 2011.
Whilst the Responsibility Deal no longer exists as Government policy, perhaps not surprising given it was subject to regular criticism and questions over its impact, the role of influencing individual choices continues to be significant in alcohol policy debates. The crucial issue for many public health advocates though is to what extent Government policy focuses on influencing individual behaviour change without utilising population level levers such as pricing. Indeed back in 2011, reports from the House of Lords and the BMJ warned of the limitations of nudge approaches to tackle such public health issues in isolation.
Supermarket drinks aisles: where the subconscious rules?
Policy debates aside, the Cambridge researchers suggest there are still significant opportunities to design retail and drinking environments in ways to reduce unhealthy consumption. The project says it will be working with over 140 student bars and 1,700 grocery stores to explore 'the effects of three different sets of interventions that show promise: changing the size and shape of food, alcohol and tobacco products (e.g. cigarette packets) and the tableware used to consume them (e.g. beer glasses), changing the availability and placement of food, alcohol and tobacco products, and the labelling of food and alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic drinks.'
Professor Paul Fletcher of the University of Cambridge research team said:
“This Award will help us to identify key links between subtle cognitive mechanisms that we can measure in the lab or brain scanner and the real world behaviours that can result in harmful patterns of over-consumption. Parallel sets of experiments, moving from the lab to the real world and back, are going to be crucial in finding ways to help people gain control of their decisions and fight back against an environment that is often pressurising us to consume, even when we are unaware of it."
In 2014 University of Cambridge research demonstrated the power of alcohol placement though increasing sales via end of aisle displays: 46% for spirits, 34% for wine and 23% for beer. However the research also highlighted the role of price in influencing purchasing from end of aisle displays; for a 1% decrease in the price (per volume) of alcohol there was approximately a 5% increase in sales volume.
Certainly the placement of products may seem like an obvious way to alter consumer behaviour, and PHE's recent evidence review supported calls from alcohol groups that availability as well as pricing needs further control. In 2011 Alcohol Concern called for supermarkets and off-licenses to confine displays of alcohol to a single area of their premises, claiming the widespread promotion of alcohol helped fuel a harmful drinking culture. Interestingly the Responsibility Deal at one point included an expectation that retailers would pull alcohol placement from front of shop, but in 2013 ASDA announced it would no longer do so after other supermarkets had not followed suit.
Implications for policy?
Currently alcohol policy across the UK may currently be regarded as in uncertain territory. A long awaited decision on Scotland's long running MUP bid is eagerly awaited, with significant implications for the other UK nations. Scotland is also preparing a new national strategy, whilst further calls for a dedicated national strategy for England were made in the wake of a new Drug Strategy.
As such the announcement of a new research programme to further explore 'nudge' approaches to improving consumer choices may not have any immediate or direct implications for national policy, which in England arguably favours a focus on individual level interventions and partnership approaches to find solutions that may 'design' or 'nudge' better choices. For many though the key question remains: will future policy on harmful drinking and its consequences continue to focus on individual level interventions, or will it make use of national policy levers on price, availability and marketing that many health groups are calling for?
Comments