Behaviour change

This Working Paper is intended to guide practitioners who are seeking to complement conventional anti-corruption measures by adopting a behavioural communications approach.

It aims to connect a typology of anti-corruption messages with behavioural change theories, and discuss their impact.

Subsequently, it suggests practical implications for designing anti-corruption communication as part of behaviour change interventions. This includes outlining how to develop a robust Theory of Change as a means to enhance the success of such efforts.

The guidance is based on a review of seven key topically pertinent studies that have been recently published.

About this paper

This publication is prepared as guidance for the USAID Indonesia Integrity Initiative (USAID INTEGRITAS).

This study is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the sole responsibility of the Basel Institute on Governance and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

Open-access licence and citation

Donors, governments and anti-corruption practitioners seeking alternative tools to address systemic corruption are increasingly turning to behavioural science. Behavioural anti-corruption approaches appear promising because they respond to a growing body of descriptive evidence on how certain social norms and mental models drive corruption, particularly in fragile contexts. Interventions that target social norms and seek to shift people’s behaviours away from corrupt practices could be more effective and long-lasting than ones that, for example, simply add more regulations and controls.

Yet few large-scale anti-corruption programmes have so far been informed by behavioural insights – in part due to a lack of evidence on where such an approach would be appropriate, what works and what doesn’t.

That evidence is slowly becoming available, thanks to an increase in the past five years in what can be called Social Norms and Behaviour Change (SNBC) intervention studies. Many have yielded positive effects and demonstrate the potential of SNBC interventions to tackle systemic corruption, but some studies have encountered counterproductive effects of anti-corruption messaging.

Based on a synthesis of the evidence, this brief paper summarises a set of behavioural explanations (i.e. insights and pitfalls) for why some of these SNBC approaches have failed, while others have been effective. The aim is to provide practitioners designing SNBC interventions with evidence to help them develop effective programmes and avoid common pitfalls.