Interview with behaviour change expert Beth Morley

15 Feb

Written By Λαμπρινή Παπαφώτη & Ιωάννα Μοσχολίδου

meta-kinisi: What is your background and what are you working on now?

BM: I’ve been working in transport for almost seven years now. I studied zoology, and then I worked in waste and recycling for many years. I first worked on the delivery of recycling programmes in cities in the United Kingdom. Later the focus of my work shifted more and more to communicating with people about why they should recycle and reduce their waste. For a long time, I was working on applying behavioural science and engaging communities. Then, I worked in a play charity, looking into the benefits of play, not only for children but also for adults.

I ended up in a transport job initially by chance because Cenex, a research consultancy, was looking for someone with community engagement and communications experience. Cenex, established as the United Kingdom’s first Centre of Excellence for Low Carbon and Fuel Cell technologies in 2005, was originally a government organisation and then became a separate not-for-profit organisation. Many teams within the organisation are focused on engineering and data analysis. I now lead the Human Insights team, applying social and behavioural science in transport and factoring in humans in the technology and innovation for net zero. In terms of specific projects, we are currently training people who work for the Kenyan Power Company on e-mobility. We are also exploring how bus shelters can be designed to be nicer places, attracting more people to use public transport, specifically in rural areas. I’m also doing a lot of work on how we can better share technology and infrastructure to make more effective use of it.

When I landed here, I realised that transport is fascinating, and it influences every part of our life. While working at Cenex, I also completed a Masters in behavioural science and applied behaviour change to supplement my practical experience with a theoretical understanding.

meta-kinisi: Transport professionals usually have an engineering background – especially in Greece – or maybe come from disciplines like economics. How does having such a different background and diverse work experience shape your work on a day-to-day basis?

There are two aspects to that. First, there is a personal element of “I’ve gone on a journey, I’ve followed things that I enjoy doing and I’ve ended up in something that I feel passionate about”. I think that if you don’t necessarily know where you are going to end up when you start your career, and you take each job as it comes and learn from it for the next one, then you won’t end up in a job that you don’t care about. Or, you are more likely to end up in a job that you really care about because you learn and you change as you go. In a practical way, and workwise, in the company I work for we talk about the importance of as many perspectives in the room as possible. The more diverse is a team, the more likely you are to avoid things like groupthink, and you can think about problems from different angles. It’s really valuable to come to transport fresh and challenge the status quo and how things have traditionally been done.

meta-kinisi: Do you find that people take this different perspective positively or some are quite fixed in their views?

BM: I think I’m lucky in the company where I work, because everybody likes to be challenged. In general, most people do. However, you need to have the people skills to be able to challenge things in a positive way. By not having this transport and engineering educational background, I often ask questions because I may not understand things, but then I find that many other people in the room were thinking the same thing as me! People don’t like to look and feel stupid, so they will stay quiet, they won’t ask if they are not sure. Sometimes when you ask someone to explain something and they can’t, it shows that they may need to get back to the initial question and problem.

meta-kinisi: Why would you say it’s important to think about human psychology and behaviour in transport planning?

BM: Part of me finds it quite difficult to answer that, because it seems obvious. Fundamentally, transport is about moving people around, enabling people to go where they want to go. The study of what people do and think, and why they do what they do is psychology. If you want to make sure that your transport system is achieving its goals, then you need to understand the people, because they are part of reaching these goals. I guess you can argue that if you are moving goods, you don’t need to worry about it so much, but humans are still involved in that. Everything that includes people needs some consideration of psychology. We need to remember that transport does not exist for its own sake. The only reason why we need cars and buses and trains, is that people want to do things.

meta-kinisi: Based on your experience, what makes people change their travel behaviour?

BM: Taking a behavioural science lens means it is not appropriate to look at people as one group. There are many types of people, behaviours and changes. You can’t say “x” makes all people do “y”. Understanding behaviour and behaviour change means that we need to look into different groups of people, think about what they are doing and what we want them to do instead, and then think about what can make them change. There’s no one answer, but understanding why people don’t change can help you enable change. You first need to understand the barriers preventing people from doing what they should be doing and then you need to remove those barriers. Sometimes it can be just having access to a mode of transport. If people don’t have access to a bus service, then they simply can’t take a bus. A lot of other times it’s about what people perceive they should be doing, or who they are. So much of how we travel comes down to habits and what we are used to. Sometimes you can do a lot of things, you can put a new service, make sure it’s affordable, you could try and promote it, make it seem more attractive, encourage people to tell their friends about it, but if the habit is to get out of the house and do something different, then change is going to be difficult. So, disruption to habit is one of the biggest tools you can use.

meta-kinisi: What is the role of individual and systemic change in creating a more sustainable transport system?

BM: I think that the individual has a much smaller role to play than what the common discourse suggests. I mentioned the buses before. Having access to a bus requires a national policy that supports them with proper funding to cater for people’s needs. None of this is under the control of individuals. There’s a huge amount that needs to be in place before the individual can choose to get on a bus. In Cenex, we are talking a lot at the moment about systems thinking and trying to get more people to understand that there are many layers to how we need to change from carbon inducing transport to zero emission transport. As far as the social and cultural layers are concerned, I don’t think we are doing a great job in addressing the current systems and influencing cultural and social norms.

meta-kinisi: How can behavioural science help us communicate the urgency of climate change and use that to encourage travel behaviour change?

BM: Researchers have shown that messages that make people feel worried or scared and guilty about their choices are not effective in getting them to change. Behavioural science can help communicate the importance and the benefits of changing how you travel in a way that will get us to reach our climate goals faster. I appreciate that people are very worried and the data shows that climate change is a critical issue. But neither communicating with messages that make people panic nor telling people that this is not their problem are helpful. We have seen over the last 20 years that both types of communication tactics have led to inaction. I am always trying to be hopeful and positive, and I think with the technology we already have, there are reasons to be positive about what is possible.

meta-kinisi: Do you have any good or bad examples of how behavioural science is used or not used to influence how we travel?

BM: In Nottingham, where I live, a few years ago they renamed and colour coded all of the bus routes. They made it easy to understand which bus you need to take to get you where you need to go. Then, they implemented real-time information at the bus stops. With reliable real-time information you know how long you have to wait and you can make decisions based on this, so you no longer have a fear or uncertainty about your journey. You might not think of this as behavioural science, but it actually is. These measures come from an understanding that one of the reasons why people don’t get the bus is that they are worried about how long they will be waiting and they are nervous about whether the service will do what it’s supposed to do. If you put measures in place that give people the confidence that they are waiting in the right place and that the bus is coming, it makes it a more pleasant experience and more likely for people to change how they travel if they are taking the bus for the first time. That’s an example of a positive change where behavioural science is used to understand and remove known barriers.

There are a lot of bad examples when it comes to electric vehicle charging. It’s only the last years that we’ve seen a greater focus on the human factor and thinking about the user, rather than just getting the technology to work. For example, why haven’t the charge points developed so that we don’t need a tethered cable? From a user’s perspective, the idea that you have to carry around this really heavy cable in your boot all the time, and then you need to get out of your car with it to charge it, it is just not great.

meta-kinisi: One of the issues that we are finding in Greece is that there is a lack of data on travel behaviour of different population groups and a limited focus on inequality and on making transport more inclusive. In a context like that, how do you start to approach the different problems that all these groups are facing and start thinking about different solutions for them?

BM: What you are saying is that you lack the data, but you think that the reason you lack the data is a lack of perception that this is an issue. This is the point. How do you get people to acknowledge that this is something they should be thinking about? You also mentioned that there very specific routes to entering the transport sector in Greece. There’s a lot of behavioural changes that need to happen in the transport industry. We get very preoccupied about changing people’s behaviour, but we need to start with the industry and the people that make the decisions, the transport plans and the models. Within Cenex, we have done lot of work with the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund, which is a UK Government fund going to local authorities to help them implement charging points on residential streets. As part of that, there has been capacity building funding as well, which allows local authorities to hire more people, and build a training programme alongside that. We need more emphasis on capacity building in the transport sector and we need more investment in it. Then you can start delivering the datasets, and start thinking about how you can change people’s travel behaviour. But I don’t see how that can happen without a national government mandate. You can have individuals and small groups pushing for change, but it’s going to be difficult if it’s only a few people from the industry trying to make it happen without top-down support.

meta-kinisi: What makes you the happiest and what disappoints you the most in your job?

I’m very happy working with colleagues and not just the ones from Cenex, but in other projects too. For example, in the bus stop design project I was talking about, we are working as a team with a design firm and the local authority. When we have project meetings, everybody comes with a lot of ideas but we are also all challenging our ideas. I like having new ideas, but I also like it when they become results. I like to see something developing from just an idea to something concrete.

What disappoints me is when I’ve seen work being commissioned and money spent on anything that could have been better spent. And the approach taken is just because this is the way things have always been done. It adds some unnecessary work that is not progress. In consultancy, we work with our clients and discuss the best way forward, but sometimes in big projects it can be a challenge.