We’re generally told not to play with people’s feelings, but is it sometimes okay to break the rules?

This summer, it was the albatross that did it. As David Attenborough patiently walked UK television audiences through the dangers posed by plastics to our Blue Planet, we all latched onto the emotional bait. Beautiful sea creatures choking on plastic waste led to a public outcry. What scientists and NGOs had tried to change for years with limited success was elegantly accomplished through an emotional evening in front of the telly. The scale of the campaigns that followed – from primary school art work to pubs banning plastic straws - have been stunning. No one I know uses a plastic bag for their weekly shop anymore (or if they do, they look apologetic).

The power of a good narrative is not a new phenomenon in public policy or environmental campaigns. The standard process of creating a policy is often abstract and dry, weighing costs and benefits, using techniques such as the ‘value of a statistical life’ to arrive at a decision to, say, reduce local water pollution. It is the correct approach, but in order to convince the public to support the policy we usually need a Story. To sell an idea, we must be less technical and more emotional, for instance by looking at ‘identified’ and not ‘statistical’ lives. The Nobel-prize winning economist Thomas Schelling famously wrote about the contrast between the statistical and identified life in the brilliantly named “The life you save may be your own”. The level of support for a policy depends significantly on whether you can identify with it.

 Richard Thaler, another Nobel Prize winner, cottoned on to the importance of emotions and ‘cognitive biases’ early in his career. His work, together with that of other behavioural economists, have led to experiments with policy design that takes cognitive biases into account. For example, we know that it is rational to sign up for pension savings programmes but a series of cognitive biases such as inertia and time discounting means that take-up rates are lower than what we would have expected from fully rational behaviour. As a result, many policies (such as pension schemes) are now ‘tweaked’ to make it easier for people to make the choices that are beneficial to them.

 One of my research interests these days is whether nudges can be applied to how we regulate land use. Farmers have a reputation for being reluctant to change, but we need them to come with us as we change the way our food is produced and our soils conserved. Emerging research suggests that individual preferences and motivations are likely to be important factors determining the success of any incentive offered to farmers and that financial incentives alone are unlikely to be effective.  This is important advice for policy makers going forward.

Five out of the top eight risks identified by global leaders at the WEF meeting in Davos this month are nature related. Fixing these seems like it should be a high priority. If that means playing on all strings– also the emotional ones – then so be it.