Hal G.

Rainey, Editor

R. Kent Weaver
Georgetown University

Theory to Practice Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers

R. Kent Weaver is professor
of public policy and government at
Georgetown University and senior fellow
in the Governance Studies Program at the
Brookings Institution. His current research
focuses on policy implementation, compara-
tive social policy, and the role of political
blame generating in shaping policy choices.
E-mail: kent.weaver@georgetown.edu
Abstract: Many government policies attempt to change the behavior of individuals and businesses. This article argues
that policy makers and administrators should (1) think comprehensively about the barriers that may keep target
populations from complying with government policies, (2) match policy instruments to the most important barriers
that inhibit compliance, and (3) take into account heterogeneity within the target population. Relatively nonintrusive
strategies such as social marketing, providing resources to targets to help them comply, and manipulating options and
defaults (choice architecture) are politically attractive but unlikely to secure compliance when incentives for non-
compliance are high. Based on the three basic principles outlined in the article, the author recommends strategies to
increase compliance, including the use of leverage points and secondary targets, adjusting for unanticipated behavioral
responses, and employing long-term, multiphase strategic management of behavior change initiatives.

Practitioner Points
• Potential barriers to compliance with public policies by individuals and businesses can and should be
anticipated in the design of policies as well as during their implementation.
• When compliance with public policy is low, it is often because target populations confront multiple
barriers to compliance.
• Both the instruments chosen to address compliance issues and the settings on those instruments should
focus on the most important barriers to compliance and may have to be adjusted over time and with
experience.
• Because target populations are heterogeneous, policies that secure compliance by some elements of a target
population may not succeed with others.
• Addressing compliance problems often requires long-term strategizing with multiple policy phases.

Public Administration Review,
Vol. 75, Iss. 6, pp. 806–816. © 2015 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12412.
806 Public Administration Review • November | December 2015
M
any government policies can achieve their
objectives only if individuals and busi-
nesses in society engage in specific behav-
iors that are consistent with those objectives. If
traffic fatalities are to be reduced, individuals must
wear seat belts, obey stop signs, and avoid drinking
before driving and texting while driving. Individuals
must obey emergency evacuation or shelter-in-place
orders to reduce fatalities from hurricanes (Stein et
al. 2013). They must increase recycling efforts if the
use of landfills is to decline and refrain from car-
rying weapons and bombs on airplanes if air travel
is to remain safe. Similarly, businesses must obey
environmental laws to reduce pollution and follow
building codes to reduce fatalities from shoddy
construction. They must also collect and forward to
government payroll tax contributions if government
social insurance programs are to function properly.
They must obey workplace safety and child labor
laws if government objectives in those areas are to
be achieved.
When governments are very specific and insistent in
the behavior they seek (e.g., not carrying weapons on
airplanes), adherence to those standards is frequently
referred to as “compliance” (Sparrow 1994, 2000). In
these sectors, governments often devote substantial
resources to monitoring and enforcement to ensure
that there is universal adherence to the policy. In other
sectors (e.g., reduced childhood obesity, saving for
retirement, smoking cessation), governments are only
moderately insistent, and in other cases, government
objectives are often closer to vague aspirations (e.g.,
improving household energy efficiency) than clear
obligations. When there is a moderate or low obliga-
tion to engage in a behavior sought by a government,
it may be more appropriate to refer to behaviors that
are “consistent” with governmental preferences or
even, when those actions are encouraged by govern-
ment but not obligatory, “coproducing” rather than
“compliant” (see, e.g., Alford 2007; Bovaird 2007).
For terminological simplicity, this article will nev-
ertheless use the term “compliance” throughout to
refer to behaviors that are compatible with governmental prefer-
ences while recognizing that such preferences are made with varying
degrees of insistence—and thus varying degrees of obligation
imposed.
In addition to how insistent and intrusive governments are in their
requests or demands for preferred behaviors, governmental efforts
to influence individual and business behaviors vary on a number of
other dimensions, including the breadth of the target population
whose behavior the policy seeks to affect, whether those policies
involve single or multiple behaviors, how frequently the behavior is
demanded, and whether there are some segments of the target popu-
lation that are at a particularly elevated risk of noncompliance (see
table 1 for examples). Paying income taxes, for example, is targeted
at the entire working population (although those earning below a
specific threshold may be exempt), while child support enforcement
policies are targeted at noncustodial parents.
Given the importance of individual and business behavior in
achieving governmental objectives, it is not surprising that a variety
of social science disciplines have addressed why individuals and
businesses do or do not behave in the ways that are consistent with
government’s policy preferences. A substantial literature focuses on
information barriers to compliance and the design of social market-
ing campaigns to address those barriers (see, e.g., Andreasen 1994).
In recent years, behavioral economics (see Kahneman 2003, 2011;
Kahneman and Tversky 1984; Shafir 2013) has sharpened interest
in psychological, cognitive, and social influences within the target
population as barriers to compliance. Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge
(2008) has focused attention on ways that government can promote
compliance through choice architecture (i.e., the provision and pres-
entation of alternatives made available to the targets of policy) while
minimizing both compulsion and monitoring and enforcement
costs. A number of governments have published studies drawing on
behavioral economics (Australian Public Service Commission 2007,
2009; New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development 2006;
U.K. House of Lords 2011).
The appeal to governments of relatively nonintrusive policy instru-
ments such as social marketing campaigns and manipulation of
choice architecture is understandable, as elected politicians do not
like to do things that voters may find objectionable. And they are
a useful corrective to narrowly economistic approaches that stress
getting incentive structures right. The argument of this article, how- drug administration efforts to eliminate tropical diseases tend to
ever, is that although behavioral economics provides many useful
analytic tools and strategies for effecting behavioral change, excessive swallow them) when disease incidence (and thus disease awareness
focus on cognitive and informational constraints on behavior also
has shortcomings for effective analysis. First, a focus on “nudging”
risks gives too little attention to other reasons that individuals do
not comply with policy, such as a lack of resources, a lack of moni-
toring and enforcement, and deeply held values that conflict with
the policy. Both those who are designing policies to “get people to
behave” and those who administer those poli-
cies must look at a more comprehensive set of
barriers to behavior change and compliance. It may be difficult for program
Second, a focus on choice architecture can administrators to fully under-
draw attention away from a broader repertoire stand the opportunity costs of
of policy instruments for promoting behavio- compliance.
ral change. Third, the heterogeneity of many
target populations may make some segments of those populations
unresponsive to nudges and require a more diverse set of policy
responses.
After developing these three core lessons in detail, this article pro-
vides a series of additional research-based strategic lessons to help
policy makers and administrators who are seeking to secure behavior
change. While each of the lessons developed here can be applied to
business behavior as well as individual behavior, the primary focus
here is on individuals.
Lesson 1: Think Comprehensively about the Causes of
Noncompliance and How to Address Those Causes
The literature has identified several barriers to compliance with
government policy (see, e.g., Weaver 2014). As will be discussed
further later, multiple barriers are often at work when compli-
ance rates are low. Faced with a large number of policy problems
and complex causal processes underlying human behaviors in
diverse populations, policy makers and administrators are at risk
of engaging in cognitive “tunneling” (Mullainathan and Shafir
2013), in which they focus on the most visible causes of noncom-
pliance while ignoring other important contributors to a behavior.
Employing a “checklist” (Gawande 2009) of potential barriers
to behavior change and compliance can help avoid accepting
an incorrect or incomplete diagnosis of the barriers underlying
specific behaviors and aid in developing more effective policy
responses.
Barriers to compliance can be divided into three broad clusters.
Specific problems associated with each barrier are summarized in the
left-hand column of table 2.
Incentives, Monitoring, and Enforcement Barriers
A first cluster of causes of noncompliance includes the interlinked
factors of incentives, monitoring, and enforcement (see, e.g., Sparrow
2000).
One obvious reason for noncompliance is that there are insufficient
perceived incentives for compliance. Parking tickets that have low
penalties and can easily be paid online make it less likely that people
will rush back to avoid overstaying the time on their parking meters.
A fine of $50 for smuggling a weapon onto an airplane is unlikely to
deter many would-be hijackers or terrorists. Compliance with mass
have lower compliance rates (i.e., people refuse to take the pills or to
and perceived risk) is low, when there are harmful side effects, and
when those side effects are publicized in the media (see, e.g., Babu
and Kar 2004).
It is important to have a thorough understanding of how targets
view those costs and benefits. The components of this calculus, and
the weights given to the various elements, may
not be immediately obvious to policy makers
and program administrators. In particular, it
may be difficult for program administrators
to fully understand the opportunity costs
of compliance—that is, what the target is
giving up by complying. In many developing
Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers 807
808
Table 1 Characteristics of Selected Compliance Regimes

Behavior Characteristics Target Population Characteristics Compliance Regime Characteristics

Complexity (e.g., single or Specificity and Boundary Breadth of Target Subgroups at Particular Risk of Degree of Insistence on Consistency of
Governmental Objective multiple behaviors) Clarity Frequency of Behavior Population Noncompliance Compliance Compliance Required
Pay taxes Complex but frequently in- Often unclear because Very frequent Entire employed popu- Businesses and individuals in Moderate High
direct (through employers of rule complexity and lation and businesses the informal economy
or vendors) policy interactions
Prevent weapons on Fairly simple Boundaries are fairly clear Depends on individual Aimed at terrorists, but Terrorists and hijackers Extremely high Extremely high
airplanes flying frequency all flyers are affected

Public Administration Review • November | December 2015

Reduce traffic fatalities Multiple (e.g., obey speed Varies across specific Whenever driving All drivers Young drivers, alcoholics Moderate; varies across Varies across specific
limits, avoid drunk driv- behaviors behaviors behaviors
ing, wear seat belts, avoid
texting while driving)
Save adequately for Multiple (e.g., reducing Unclear given complexity Ongoing over work- All workers People with low earnings and Varies across behaviors Consistent and ongoing
retirement spending, investing and variation across ing life unstable employment (e.g., high for public over long periods
wisely, resisting early individual need and pensions, low for
withdrawals) capacities voluntary savings)
Prevent spread of HIV Multiple (e.g., safe sex, no Mostly clear Varies based on Entire population, MSMs (men who have sex with High, but difficult to Extremely high
sharing of needles); varies behavior and target but some at much men), commercial sex work- monitor and enforce
with target subpopulation population greater risk ers, intravenous drug users
Emergency evacuation Highly complex Boundaries are unclear if Highly episodic Geographically concen- Persons with limited capacity to Varies; sometimes very High
in advance of hur- some are expected to trated self-evacuate high
ricanes or wildfires evacuate and others
are not
Table 2 Barriers and Strategies in Obtaining Behavioral Change
Problem
Incentive issues
• Insufficient incentives to compel compliance;
inertia and satisficing behavior by targets when
perceived stakes of compliance are low
• Visible or hidden opportunity costs associated
with compliance (e.g., sending potential child
workers to school)
• Contravening incentives from “nontargets”
Monitoring issues
• Compliance is difficult or expensive to monitor • Devote more resources to monitoring of
because it is illegal, takes place in private, is outcomes when monitoring of compliant
widely dispersed, etc.
Enforcement issues
• Weak incentives and/or enthusiasm for front-
line workers to enforce
Information and cognition issues
• Incorrect or missing information about pro-
gram and/or social problem it addresses (e.g.,
exaggerated fears of immunization risk, incor-
rect information on HIV prevention strategies;
incorrect theories on causes of measles)
• Lack of information about what constitutes com- • Public information campaigns with strong
pliance (e.g., energy use reduction campaigns)
• Risks of noncompliance are discounted be-
cause of myopia, etc.
• High information costs are required for target
clientele to make appropriate response (e.g.,
choosing individual account pension provider
in system with many options)
Attitudes and values
• Hostility to program providers (e.g., prison
guards) or government generally
• Value-based objections to program goals or
methods (e.g., religious objections to vaccina-
tion, schooling requirements, military service,
providing abortion services)
Peer effects
• Disparity between “descriptive norms (what
most people are perceived to actually do)
and “injunctive norms” (what it is generally
perceived that people should do)
• “Herd effects” and “broken windows” effects
in noncompliance (e.g., littering, graffiti)
Potential Strategic Response(s)
• Increase positive and/or negative incentives
for target compliance; lower rewards for
default option
• Increase positive incentives for compliance
• Increase sanctions for noncompliance
• Increase sanctions for noncompliance by
primary targets
• Treat “nontargets” as “secondary targets”
and change incentives and sanctions for
them
behavior is difficult or costly
• Change delivery mechanism to lower costs
of compliance and/or monitoring (e.g., auto-
matic cameras to detect speeding motorists)
• Increase monitoring of frontline workers
and incentives and/or resources to enforce
• Public information campaigns
• Work with community, religious, and
political leaders to use them as “opinion
leaders” in changing target perceptions
admonition
• Public information campaign; admonition;
frequent, timely reminders
• Establish good defaults
• Ban worst options
• Lower costs of information acquisition by
providing it in a simplified form; changing
choice architecture to lower number of
options and privilege “good” options
• Use framing and payoffs to improve image
of program providers among targets
• Work with community, religious political
leaders to change perceptions
• Increase sanctions for noncompliance
• Establish exemption procedures where
moral objections exist
• Frame appeals in terms of injunctive norms; – Overall level of compliance is visibly low
downplay descriptive norms
• Work with community, religious political
leaders to engage them in compliance
• Have “zero tolerance” for noncompliance
and enforce compliance strictly
Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers 809
Conditions That Facilitate (+) and Limit (–) Compliant Behavioral
Responses
+ Strong government financial resources and administrative re-
sources to monitor and enforce
– Incentives create moral hazards or have perverse effects
+ Strong government financial resources
– Target inefficiency and moral hazard problems when compliance
rates would be substantial without incentives
– Primary targets may have little control over their own actions
– Changing incentives for nontargets or secondary targets is difficult
when government has little contact or leverage with them or
cannot identify them
+ Outcomes are easily measured and closely related to government
objectives
+ Low-cost monitoring options exist
+ Strong government administrative capacity to enforce compliance
– Enforcement by frontline workers is dangerous or unpleasant
+ Performance of frontline workers in enforcement is easily
observable
+ Accurate information is relatively simple, uncontested,
and supportive of government preferences
– Working with local leaders is more difficult when (1) those leaders
have deep and long-lasting animosity to government; (2) they
have interest in fanning animosity; and (3) they fear competition
from rival elites who will portray them as sellouts
+ Compliance is relatively simple and low cost for targets,
and information on how to comply is easy to convey
+ Benefits of compliance are high and costs are low; action needed
to comply is simple and easy to communicate
+ Effective defaults are available, practical, and uncontroversial
– Harmful options are popular and have strong interest group
backing
– Less practical where
Target hostility is long-standing
Program or other provider outputs impose serious costs on targets
– Exemption strategies less appropriate where:
“Herd immunity effects” are important
Moral hazard problems exist
+ Level of trust of government in community is high
+ Behavior is easy to monitor, and monitoring costs are low
• “Herd immunity” and recipient fatigue • Increase rewards for compliance or sanc- – Compliant behavior is difficult to observe
problems: lowered incentives when most have tions for noncompliance
complied (e.g., vaccination campaigns) • Use community organizations to create – Community groups are hostile to policy or government
pressure for compliance
• Relax enforcement or exempt when 100%
compliance is not needed
Target resources
• Target lacks resources needed to comply • Provide resources—either cash or free or + Government has strong financial, organizational, or human capital
(e.g., school fees, access to transportation to low cost services/goods resources that can be made available to targets
schools; low job skills for welfare recipients)
• Target has enough resources they can ignore • Increase positive and/or negative incentives – Targets have political leverage to resist strengthened sanctions
government incentives (e.g., buying SUVs or penalties for noncompliance
despite high gasoline taxes)
Target autonomy
• Target does not control own decisions because • Decrease control by secondary target over + Behavior and secondary target control are easy to observe, and
of secondary target control, addiction, etc. primary target secondary target control is easy to disrupt
• Increase monitoring
• Provide counterincentives or sanctions for
primary or secondary targets

countries, for example, possible future income gains from send-
ing children to school must be traded against immediate family
income that can be gained from child labor. If families believe that
the returns to education are low or if they cannot afford to defer
income, they may choose child labor. Moreover, this calculus may
vary substantially across individuals.
Contravening incentives from others inside or outside the primary
target population may also lower compliance but be difficult to
observe. Pressures and threats from fathers who do not wish to
be liable for child support may inhibit mothers’ cooperation with
paternity establishment programs, for example.
Even if official incentive structures are adequate, compliance may
be low if noncompliance is difficult to monitor. Illegal commercial
sex work, for example, is almost always conducted in private. Other
noncompliant behaviors such as nonpayment of payroll taxes in
informal labor markets and illegal drug transactions are hard to
observe in part because they are so dispersed. Monitoring of work-
place safety is made more difficult by the varying hazards present
in different industries and the substantial training and expertise
required to evaluate them (Weil 2008).
Even when behavior can be monitored, noncompliant behavior
may be common when there is little enforcement. Compliance with
mandatory seat belt laws in the United States, for example, is higher
in states that have primary enforcement (i.e., stopping a motorist for
not wearing a seat belt when no other violation has been observed)
as well as those that have higher fines for violating seat belt laws
(Houston and Richardson 2005). Even when behaviors can be
monitored and enforced, those responsible for the monitoring and
enforcement (usually frontline workers for government agencies)
may have weak incentives to do so. They may resist administrative
tasks that they view as onerous or uninteresting, especially when
their resources are very limited (Burden et al. 2012). And they may
succeed at shirking in tasks for which their discretion is high and
monitoring is low (Lipsky 2010). Corrupt influences to “turn a
blind eye” to what they have observed rather than enforcing rules
also contribute to low rates of compliance in some countries.
Information/Cognition, Beliefs, and Peer Effect Barriers
A second broad category of potential barriers to compliance
concerns information and cognition, attitudes and beliefs, and peer
effects. Information and cognition barriers include a simple lack of
information about the advantages and disadvantages of compliance
or about how to comply (e.g., HIV prevention strategies, obesity
prevention, reduction of household energy use). Information barri-
ers are likely to be particularly important when compliance require-
ments are complex and highly technical, such as environmental
reporting requirements for businesses (Brehm and Hamilton 1996).
Information barriers can be compounded by language or cultural
barriers in the target community—for example, minority-owned
dry-cleaning establishments in the United States (see, e.g., Lee
2011). Misinformation about the risks associated with compliance
(e.g., polio immunization campaigns) may also inhibit compliance
(Yahya 2007).
A number of cognitive barriers may undermine compliance with
policies. Myopia (valuing current payoffs relative to future ones), for
example, may inhibit compliance in areas ranging from safe driving
to retirement savings behavior. Antismoking advertisements that
stress long-term health effects have less effect on young people than
adults because the former tend to live in the present and believe
themselves to be invulnerable or believe that they can quit before
they suffer ill effects from smoking (Goldman and Glantz 1998).
High information acquisition and processing costs (e.g., choosing
among many complex retirement savings investment vehicles) may
also inhibit behavior sought by governments.
Beliefs on the part of target populations may also inhibit compli-
ance. This may take several different forms. When most members
of a target populations hold beliefs that conflict with a policy (e.g.,
strong desire for sons, religious objections to medical treatment,
or low cultural value on girls’ schooling), they are likely to resist
compliance. Target hostility toward or mistrust of providers, pro-
grams, or government (e.g., polio vaccination in northern Nigeria)
may also inhibit enforcement. When either the policy itself or its
enforcement is seen as unfair, both the legitimacy of the policy and
compliance with it are likely to suffer (see, e.g., Tyler 1990, 2004).

810 Public Administration Review • November | December 2015

A large literature has established an important role for peer effects in
compliance—that is, compliance will be higher when compliance is
the socially acceptable thing to do. High rates of target compliance
are unlikely when there is a conflict between injunctive norms (what
people generally see as the right thing to do) and descriptive norms
(what people usually do)—for example, “No one else pays taxes, so
why should I?” The literature suggests that messages seeking compli-
ance “should focus the audience on the injunctive norm” rather than
the descriptive norm if the current prevalence of the behavior being
sought is low and stress the high prevalence of approved behavior
(i.e., the descriptive norm) when that behavior—such as recycling—
is already very common (see, e.g., Cialdini 2003).
Resource and Autonomy Barriers
A third broad category of barriers to compliance suggests that
noncompliance may result from a lack of capacity to comply with
a policy rather than a lack of willingness or knowledge and beliefs.
This may take two forms: resource barriers and lack of autonomy.
Resource barriers can take many different forms. Lack of monetary
resources and transportation were major reasons why many resi-
dents of the New Orleans region did not evacuate before Hurricane
Katrina hit (Elder et al. 2007). Lack of education and skills can
inhibit successful transitions from welfare to work. In some cases,
however, a subset of the target population may have enough
resources that they do not feel constrained by policies intended to
secure their compliance (e.g., high gasoline taxes that try to incen-
tivize purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles or fines for watering
a lawn during a drought).
A final reason that research suggests compliance rates may be low
is that those who are targeted for compliance may lack autonomy
in deciding the extent of their compliance. Restrictions on autono-
mous decision making can take several forms and are frequently
a matter of degree. Physical addiction is perhaps the clearest form
of autonomy deficit. Most smokers and users of narcotic drugs
are unlikely to quit simply as a result of acquiring information
or admonitions concerning the dangers of their addiction, for
example.
Control (or at least an effective veto) by other individuals and
groups over the actions of target populations is another form of
absence of autonomy. Parents exercise control over whether their
children attend school, for example, while owners and customers
in commercial sex establishments may have more leverage than sex
workers in determining whether 100 percent condom use policies
required by government are adhered to (Rojanapithayakorn 2006).
Successful welfare-to-work transitions require that employers be
willing to hire welfare leavers. In these cases, policy makers must
attempt to change the behavior of “secondary targets” who exercise
control over others.
Multiple Barriers and Compliance Failures
There is a tendency to think that if policy makers address the most
glaring causes of noncompliance—for example, information short-
ages or inappropriate incentive structures—that is all that needs to
be done. Less obvious or visible causes of noncompliance, such as
a lack of client resources or the opportunity costs of compliance,
should not be ignored, especially when those factors reinforce each
other in undermining compliance. For example, a vast academic
literature on tax compliance and tax evasion has addressed multi-
ple factors at both the individual and the systemic levels that make
compliance more or less likely and affect the efficacy of specific
strategies to increase compliance. In a comparative study of tax
compliance in Chile and Argentina, Bergman (2009) showed that
higher rates of tax compliance in Chile resulted from multiple fac-
tors, including a more effective monitoring and detection system,
much greater difficulty in bribing tax inspectors, and more rigor-
ous and consistent enforcement (e.g., closing of businesses) that
raised the perceived costs of noncompliance. In the United States,
studies of welfare-to work initiatives have found that the women
with the worst outcomes in getting and holding jobs tended to
have multiple barriers to compliance with work requirements,
such as very low skills and education levels, domestic violence
problems, and previously diagnosed health or mental health issues,
as well as trouble accessing public transportation and affordable
child care (Danziger and Seefeldt 2003). Higher rates of traf-
fic accidents among young drivers in many countries are related
to higher rates of overconfidence and greater acceptance of risk
(cognition) and less experience at detecting hazards and dealing
with them effectively (resources); risky driving behavior is exac-
erbated by the presence of a male passenger and inhibited by the
presence of adult passengers (peer effects) (see, e.g., Deery 1999;
Simons-Morton, Lerner, and Singer 2005; Williams and Shults
2010). Policies that address only a subset of barriers to compliance
are likely to fail.
Lesson 2: Link Strategies for Increasing Compliance
to the Underlying Reason for Noncompliance
Governments have a variety of strategies that they can use to pro-
mote compliance. Weaver (2014) argues that these strategies can
be divided into seven broad categories, in rough order of increasing
intrusiveness:
• Providing information about what behavior is compliant, how
to comply, and the advantages of compliance
• Admonition to comply on moral, self-interested, or other
grounds
• Providing resources to comply, which may be targeted to those
who would otherwise lack those resources
• Manipulating options and defaults (choice architecture) without
substantially affecting the payoffs to individuals of doing so
• Providing positive incentives for compliance
• Having negative incentives for noncompliance
• Prohibitions and requirements with punishments attached
The settings on specific instruments can also vary in their intensity
(Hall 1993). Taxes on cigarettes and gasoline (negative incen-
tives) and deposits on bottles (positive incentives) can be raised
or lowered, for example. Text warnings on cigarette packages
(information plus admonition) can be increased in their intensity
through the inclusion of pictorial warnings of the risks of smoking.
Cross-national evidence suggests that the latter are more effective in
preventing take-up of smoking, motivating quitting, and main-
taining abstinence among former smokers (see, e.g., Borland et al.
2009), although there may be “message wear-out” in extended use
of specific text and defensive “terror management” among some
smokers that reduces the effectiveness of the warning messages (see,
e.g., Hansen, Winzeler, and Topolinskic 2010).
Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers 811
The middle column of table 2 shows strategies that are frequently
used to address each of the barriers outlined in lesson 1, while the
right-hand column shows conditions that are likely to affect the
efficacy of specific strategies. For example, public information strate-
gies are likely to be useful in situations in which the advantages to
targets of compliance are high and the costs to targets of compli-
ance are low, but targets of policy are unaware of these facts. When
incentives, monitoring, and/or enforcement are relatively weak,
strengthening the weak links is an appropriate response.
of socially desirable outcomes, are also relevant to this lesson.
These principles can be seen in the New Zealand government’s
“KiwiSaver” program that was implemented to increase individual
retirement savings, which tries to lower both information and
economic costs. Although the program is not mandatory, workers
are automatically enrolled unless they opt out (choice architecture).
Workers who do not choose a fund are assigned to a default fund.
In addition, there are both tax incentives for participation and direct
government subsidies for contributions (Kritzer 2007).

However, there are also numerous complications that make the Lesson 5: Prioritize the Barriers That Are Most
assumption that “stronger incentives and enforcement equal greater Important in Causing Noncompliance
compliance” much more complicated than it might seem at first Targets of policy sometimes face what Wilson (1989) called “situ-
glance. Strengthening negative incentives, for ational imperatives” to refer to conditions
example, creates a stronger impetus to try to
Policy makers who are consider- that overwhelm any other considerations in a
maneuver around those incentives rather than target group’s decision on whether to comply
comply. Increasing cigarette taxation is likely ing increasing incentives and with policy.1 For example, families in develop-
to lead to an increase in cigarette smuggling, enforcement need to consider ing countries who are desperately poor are
for example. Policy makers who are consider- the ways in which doing so may more likely to have their children engaged in
ing increasing incentives and enforcement lead to new, and potentially child labor within or outside the household
need to consider the ways in which doing more harmful, forms of rather than attending school. In this case,
so may lead to new, and potentially more being able to eat is more important than
noncompliance.
harmful, forms of noncompliance. acquiring human capital.

Lesson 3: Do Not Assume That Target Populations
Are Homogeneous and That Strategies to Secure
Compliance from the “Modal” Target Will Work for All
A strategy that may be sufficient to obtain compliance from one
segment of a target population may not work for others, especially
when they confront different barriers to compliance or the same
barrier (e.g., resources or autonomy) to very different degrees.
The situation is even more complex when different behaviors are
required from different segments of the population—for example,
when those most at risk of a hurricane storm surge are requested
to evacuate, but those at lower risk should shelter in place to avoid
traffic backups that could paralyze evacuation efforts (Stein et al.
2013, 321–22). Tailoring information campaigns to specific sections
of the target population may improve compliance results, but it is
also likely to increase confusion as well as the costs and complexity
of implementation.
Lesson 4: Think about Ways to Make Complying with
Government Policies Easier and Less Costly
If compliance involves perceptions of costs by the target popula-
tion—costs in time, in out-of-pocket costs or foregone income,
or consistency with values—it may be possible to increase compli-
ance by lowering those costs (see, e.g., Herd et al. 2013). Increased
household recycling rates in wealthy countries are associated with
“convenience” factors such as curbside recycling, provision of recy-
cling bins, and frequent collection, for example (Ando and Gosselin
2005; Peretz, Tonn, and Folz 2005). A recent Facebook campaign to
increase organ donation registrations provided direct links to state
online registration sites, lowering the risk of procrastination and the
costs of registration (Cameron et al. 2013)
Core principles of behavioral economics, notably, the ideas that
choices should not be too complicated and that the default option
should be one that is consistent with the government’s perception
812 Public Administration Review • November | December 2015
Governments need to develop focused strategies to respond to situ-
ational imperatives that put target compliance, and policy success,
at risk. In the case of school attendance, for example, a number of
countries have instituted school feeding programs and conditional
cash transfers that require school attendance and other behaviors,
such as routine immunizations, in order to receive the transfer pay-
ments. Of course, responding to the situational imperatives of some
client groups will be more manageable, and more affordable, than
others. But governments that fail to take account of potential situ-
ational imperatives and try to enforce policies that run contrary to
those imperatives risk both high rates of noncompliance and foster-
ing anger and mistrust among the targeted group.
Lesson 6: Use Mass Media and Social Media Campaigns
to Achieve Objectives, but Recognize Their Limitations
Governments and civil society organizations have tried to change
the behavior of target populations by framing issues in specific
ways (e.g., emphasizing the risks associated with noncompliance),
providing information, and, in some cases, admonishing particular
behaviors in a number of different sectors. The literatures on health
behaviors and road safety are particularly rich (see, e.g., Elder et al.
2004; Randolph and Viswanath 2004).
Research on campaigns to change health behaviors suggests that the
effects of framing in information-focused campaigns are quite com-
plex, however. Issue framing that emphasizes the risks of noncompli-
ance (negative framing) is more effective at promoting “detection
behaviors” to discover health problems (e.g., breast self-examina-
tions), whereas positive framing (emphasizing the advantages of com-
pliance) may be more effective at promoting “prevention behaviors”
such as dental flossing and safe sex for HIV prevention, although the
size and generalizability of these differences is contested (for a skepti-
cal meta-analysis, see O’Keefe and Jensen 2009). A recent review
of the health behavior literature suggests that media campaigns
are more likely to succeed at changing behavior “when the target
behavior is one-off or episodic (e.g., screening, vaccination, children’s searches, and so on—what has come to be known as “Driving While
aspirin use) rather than habitual or ongoing (e.g., food choices, sun Black” or “Flying While Muslim.”
exposure, physical activity), [and c]oncurrent
availability of and access to key services and While concerns for selective enforcement are
products are crucial to persuade individuals While concerns for selective legitimate, there may be some circumstances
motivated by media messages to act on them” enforcement are legitimate, in which groups whose behavior is most likely
(Wakefield, Loken, and Hornik 2010, 1268). there may be some circum- to cause social harm can be singled out for
The effects of media campaigns are less likely special rules or for enforcement attention. For
stances in which groups whose
to have sustained effects in the face of “per- example, given the high accident rates of teen
vasive marketing for competing products or behavior is most likely to cause drivers, many jurisdictions have enacted rules
with opposing messages” (e.g., for unhealthy social harm can be singled out that prevent teen drivers from carrying multi-
foods) and when addiction and social norms for special rules or for enforce- ple other teens as passengers (because they are
constrain behavior change (Wakefield, Loken, ment attention. likely to distract drivers) or that restrict their
and Hornik 2010, 1268). driving late at night (Twisk and Stacey 2007;
Williams and Shults 2010).
The research also suggests that it is not enough to emphasize that
there is a general threat: the targets of campaigns must believe Lesson 8: Look for “Leverage Points” Where Desired
that they are personally at risk. Moreover, telling the targets of an Behavior Can Be Promoted with Minimum Cost and
admonition campaign that they are vulnerable to a threat—that is, Resistance
merely stoking fear and scaring them—is not sufficient to provoke “Leverage points” are points in the policy delivery chain where major
behavior change. It is equally important “to convince individuals increases in compliance can be achieved by reducing targets’ compli-
they are able to perform the recommended response . . . and that ance costs, reducing monitoring costs, and/or simplifying program
the recommended response effectively averts the threat” (Witte et al. delivery. Employers’ withholding of income taxes and reporting and
1998, 347; emphasis in original). In the case of HIV prevention, for transferring amounts withheld to government is a good example of
example, research suggests that campaigns that “just scare people” the use of a leverage point that is so deeply institutionalized that we
without conveying that individuals can take action to avoid the do not even think about it. Knowing that the government already
threat may cause individuals who do not feel that they can control has our money and that it has an accurate record of how much we
the danger to “instead control their fear by denying their risk of HIV have earned almost certainly increases compliance with tax laws over
infection, defensively avoiding the HIV/AIDS issue, or perceiving what the case would be if we were just asked to report our earnings
manipulation (e.g., ‘AIDS is a hoax; it’s really a government plot’)” (with no independent verification from employers) and send in a
(Witte et al. 1998, 347; emphasis in original; see also Hastings, check for the tax owed at the end of the year.
Stead, and Webb 2004). Thus, smoking cessation campaigns now
typically emphasize that quitting is possible (even for those who A more nuanced example of using leverage points comes from the
have tried and failed before) and direct their audience to specific case of paternity establishment in the United States. Over the past
resources that can help them to quit (see, e.g., Rigotti and Wakefield 15 years, state authorities in the United States have attempted to
2012). increase the establishment of paternity in cases of nonmarital births
as a mechanism to require fathers to pay child support. Many of the
Lesson 7: Analyze How Much Compliance Is “Good relationships that lead to nonmarital births are unstable, and the
Enough”—and by Whom—for the Policy to Be financial consequences for fathers of acknowledging paternity can be
a Success, and Devote More Resources to Those substantial. Two leverage points have been used in the United States
“Mission-Critical” Populations to increase paternity establishment. First, single mothers must cooper-
In cases in which government resources are limited—which is ate with state authorities in establishing paternity as part of the eligi-
almost always—it is important to analyze how much compliance is bility process for receiving benefits under the Temporary Assistance
“good enough” (Grindle 2007), and by whom, for the policy to be to Needy Families program (Mincy, Garfinckel, and Nepomnyaschy
a success. The ubiquity of resource constraints also suggests that it is 2005). Second, legislation in 1993 and 1996 required states to estab-
important to identify the most “mission-critical” elements of target lish voluntary in-hospital paternity acknowledgment programs. At the
noncompliance and develop strategies and allocate resources to deal time that births take place, many unmarried fathers do come to the
with them. It is vital to link the strategy for increasing compliance hospital, the parents are much more likely to be in a relationship, and
to the severity of consequences of noncompliance. For example, many fathers are willing to acknowledge paternity. It should be noted,
there is a strong case for compulsion in quarantining people with however, that although the rate of in-hospital paternity establishment
highly contagious and fatal diseases such as Ebola. has increased substantially, there is wide variation across states and
individual hospitals in the success of the program. Frontline workers
If governments seek to prevent certain kinds of outcomes, they in hospitals are often uncomfortable taking on the role of facilitat-
may be able to do so at a lower cost by concentrating monitoring ing paternity acknowledgment and are overwhelmed by other duties.
resources on targets deemed most likely to be noncompliant. But Research shows that when they do not focus on paternity acknowl-
on what grounds are subgroups of the target population selected for edgment, little progress is made (Turner 2001).
intensified scrutiny? Selective monitoring and enforcement prac-
tices can lead to very legitimate concerns about racial, ethnic, and Although it is important to think of potential opportunities to
other forms of profiling when they are used for traffic stops, airport use leverage points that will lower the costs of monitoring and
Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers 813
the costs of compliance for program targets, it is equally impor-
tant to be conscious of the potential implementation challenges
and risks in using leverage points. Creative use of leverage points
may require developing partnerships with entities that do not see
themselves as agents of government and may initially be suspicious
or hostile. Programmatic and bureaucratic “silos” may also need
to be overcome to use leverage points effectively. Implementation
may require the cooperation of frontline workers who may see
the new task as an unwanted imposition that is tangential to, or
even conflicting with, their professional responsibilities and their
organizational mission. As noted earlier, paternity acknowledg-
ment has made more headway when it is a strong agency prior-
ity that is stressed in training hospital workers than when that is
not the case. Use of leverage points may also put clients at risk.
Requiring unmarried mothers who receive government cash assis-
tance to name the fathers of their children, for example, may put
some at risk of violence or a reduction in informal support from
fathers who do not wish to be subject to legal child support orders
(Tolman and Raphael 2000).
Lesson 9: Be on the Lookout for Unanticipated
Behavioral Effects When Instituting New Mechanisms
to Promote Behavioral Change or Changing Old Ones
Research has repeatedly shown that seemingly simple and obvious
changes in programs can have consequences that are very differ-
ent from what was intended. In the Dayton (Ohio) Wage Subsidy
experiment evaluated by Burtless (1985), for example, welfare recip-
ients were given a voucher that entitled employers to a wage subsidy
if they hired them, but workers with the vouchers actually had lower
job placement rates than comparable workers without the vouchers.
The fact that the voucher clearly stated that the voucher holder was
a welfare recipient apparently caused employers to stigmatize the job
seeker as likely to be an unreliable worker.
More subtle forms of unintended consequences are also common.
Instituting modest fines for parents who arrive late to pick up
their children from a child care center, for example, may result in
an increase rather than a decrease in late parental arrivals because
it transforms late arrivals in parents’ minds from a socially unac-
ceptable practice to a service with a price attached (Gneezy and
Rustichini 2000).
Lesson 10: Guard against Reversals and Erosion in
Improvements in Policy Compliance
As the right-hand column in table 2 suggests, strategies to address
barriers to behavioral change work better under some conditions
than others. When those conditions change, so may the efficacy of
behavioral change strategies and rates of compliance. Most obvi-
ously, gains in target population compliance are unlikely to be
sustained when perceptions of the ratio between the benefits and the
costs of compliance shift in a negative direction—for example, when
the availability of antiretroviral drugs means that HIV is no longer
perceived as a death sentence.
Research suggests several additional conditions under which reversal
or erosion of compliance gains is likely to be significant. First,
monitoring and enforcement may decline, especially when (1)
frontline workers are resistant to monitoring and enforcing compli-
ance, (2) top administrators stop paying attention to enforcement,
814 Public Administration Review • November | December 2015
or (3) other implementation barriers arise. Compliance with a New
York State law prohibiting the use of handheld cell phones initially
increased after the law was implemented, for example, but was not
sustained a year later after publicity on the requirement declined and
little publicity was given to enforcement efforts (McCartt and Geary
2004). Efforts to eliminate polio and several tropical diseases through
mass vaccination or drug administration have suffered setbacks in the
developing world when civil strife made distribution more difficult
(Koroma et al. 2013) and when trust of the target population in
those implementing the program and/or the safety and efficacy of
the treatment declined (Renne 2006; Yahya 2007). Peer effects in the
target population may decline as well. Efforts to eliminate tropical
diseases through mass drug administration may suffer as eradication
nears: because many people may have never seen the harm caused
by the disease, they may be less willing to consistently undertake
the behaviors required to prevent its resurgence. To avoid long-term
erosion of compliance, administrators need to engage in continuous
monitoring of compliance rates followed by diagnosis and response
with appropriate settings and instruments to address barriers to com-
pliance faced by the population whose compliance is flagging.
Lesson 11: Think about Behavior Change Strategy in the
Long Term and in Multiple Phases
When harmful behaviors are widely practiced in a society and
viewed as customary and socially approved, beginning a behavior
change strategy with highly intrusive instruments and settings may
lead to mobilization of opponents that delays any progress. More
modest initial steps may build public support for more aggressive
approaches. As the case of tobacco use shows, this is particularly
true if powerful commercial interests benefit from the behavior and
frame government efforts to restrict its practice as an infringement
on individual rights and “the nanny state run amok” (Apollonio and
Bero 2007).
Multistage strategies have been employed in many efforts to change
behavior, notably, in efforts to reduce smoking. Antismoking efforts
typically begin with relatively modest efforts at providing informa-
tion on the health risks of smoking. This may lead over time to the
“denormalization” of smoking (i.e., the erosion of views that smoking
is an acceptable and “customary” activity) and to increased support
for more intrusive tobacco control regimes, including higher tobacco
taxes, more graphic cigarette pack warnings, bans on sales to minors,
and bans on smoking in public places, all of which can lead to a
reduction in tobacco use (Chapman and Freeman 2008). Similar
patterns can be seen in the evolution of government efforts to reduce
obesity, which are made more complex by the blurry lines between
which behaviors are and are not unhealthy and by the absence of
“secondhand” effects on others that stigmatize smoking and erode
support for smokers rights (Stuber, Galea, and Link 2008).
Conclusions
Many barriers to compliance can be anticipated in advance and
incorporated into the design phase of behavior change policies.
Additional adjustments can and should be made once a policy is
in place to take into account changing patterns of compliance,
changing barriers to compliance, and differences in local context.
But none of these practices is likely to happen unless a conscious,
comprehensive, and long-term strategic approach is taken by
both program designers and administrators to look at barriers to
compliance, employ appropriate instruments, and take into account
the heterogeneity of target populations.
Drawing on these fundamental principles, policy makers and
administrators can use a number of strategies—searching for
ways to lower compliance costs, employing leverage points, and
developing long-term, multiphase strategies—to achieve these
objectives.
Of course, policy makers face a number of constraints in pursuing
behavior change strategies. Many policy instruments, especially
those that are highly intrusive, are likely to face political opposition,
especially when proponents of the status quo are politically power-
ful. Limited governmental financial resources to fund incentive
strategies, limited administrative capacity to monitor and enforce
policy, and mistrust of government are problems in many contexts,
but especially in developing countries.
A final caveat is that widespread failures of
compliance by targets of policy may signal
that there is something wrong with the policy, Widespread failures of compli-
rather than with the targets who are being ance by targets of policy may
uncooperative by failing to comply with it. signal that there is something
Policy experts tend to think that they know wrong with the policy, rather
best, that they possess all the relative informa-
than with the targets who are
tion, and that the policy they have come up
being uncooperative by failing
with is the best option, given myriad con-
straints, including political constraints. It is to comply with it.
important to remember that policy makers
in the past felt the same way about policies that we now regard as
fundamentally wrongheaded, such as laws in many U.S. states that Cialdini, Robert B. 2003. Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment.
prohibited interracial marriage and required racial segregation of Current Directions in Psychological Science 12(4): 105–9.
schools and other public facilities. With behavior change, as with Danziger, Sandra K., and Kristin S. Seefeldt. 2003. Barriers to Employment and the
other policy initiatives, policy makers must listen to and learn from “Hard to Serve”: Implications for Services, Sanctions, and Time Limits. Social
the “targets” of public policy—especially those who lack the political Policy and Society 2(2): 151–60.
resources to ensure that their voices are heard. Deery, Hamish. 1999. Hazard and Risk Perception among Young Novice Drivers.
Note
1. Wilson (1989) uses the term to refer to the behavior of frontline workers rather
than program targets. For example, he refers to the imperative of police officers
to “establish control” when they arrive at the scene of a dispute between two
citizens.
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