BehaviourWorks Australia & EPA Victoria Partnership: Summary of 24 research projects and learnings

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EPA Victoria has participated in at least 24 substantial projects with BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) since co-founding it in 2011. This report consolidates and reviews these projects with a focus on identifying key research findings, learnings and gaps. Five key research insights can be inferred across the projects: 1. Behavioural science enhances efficacy by tailoring regulatory responses to the problem, audience and context. 2. Intervening at the right time is critical to influence individual and business decision-making processes. 3. Deterrence supports the effectiveness of other regulatory strategies, but so does legitimacy, procedural justice and fairness. 4. Internal expertise and consistent advice is valuable in regulatory interactions that are behaviourally impactful. 5. Many proactive businesses desire positive and constructive interactions with EPA, but rarely experience it, as they often receive compliance-oriented responses. While all the projects map onto BWA’s “Method” for conducting different phases of behaviour change research, they are diverse in size and nature. Only four projects bridged all three phases of the Method, taking place over a year or more. Five projects represented variations of theory-informed audience research aiming to better understand how to influence the behaviour of one or more key target audiences. Four projects were post-hoc evaluations of existing EPA initiatives. Two projects developed and trialled “nudge” interventions on large volume service delivery programs at EPA. Evidence reviews summarising the state of knowledge on behavioural aspects of different regulatory implementation and policy questions represented four projects. Finally, internal analysis reports, publications and conference presentations exploring both practical and scholarly questions account for four projects. At the present time, these projects have resulted in five peer reviewed journal articles, and eight conference presentations, with two more papers in development. Larger projects have typically equated to greater impact and relevance within EPA and in scholarly literature. Conversely, smaller projects have had a more “hit and miss” character, although often representing valuable insights in return for relatively small investments. Similarly, there is limited evidence of insights from any one project extending beyond the life time of that project, except in scholarly publications. Larger projects facilitated iterative application of insights across project cycles, but not beyond the project itself. These observations suggest a more deliberate portfolio approach may be desirable in future, reflecting agreed priorities. Beyond routine program management, the partnership structure and management approach has not supported a central repository of completed projects and reports, nor any systematic effort to communicate it and share lessons learned beyond individual projects. This has limited the opportunities for organisational and policy learning arising from this body of work. Intensive engagement with EPA’s administrative and customer relationship management data has exposed both its potential value, and limitations, over the years. Reform of data and digital systems represents an opportunity to further optimise the behaviour change impact and research value of EPA activity. EPA’s transformation agenda and new legislation represent opportunities for the partnership to deliver more value. This includes enhancing and testing the operationalisation of regulatory ideas into practice by optimising their behavioural efficacy, and answering with evidence reviews the many implementation and policy questions confronting EPA. Finally, the reform of business and ICT systems and the development of new programs and services represent numerous opportunities to ensure high quality and relevant behavioural data is generated, understood and acted upon as part of business as usual in the new EPA.