Behavioural economics in the pub

Our industry’s approaches rest upon a number of assumptions. But these assumptions are being questioned by behavioural economics. Results from countless psychological experiments show that people are poor at reporting and predicting their own behaviour, and that their preferences are malleable. Our decisions are influenced more than we realise by our frame of mind, the people we are with and our environment.

Knowing that to understand behaviour you really need to understand context, we gave some thought to how we might use behavioural economics in a new mass ethnographic research approach. We took as our subject a social and cultural problem that costs the UK taxpayer £20bn a year: binge drinking. We wanted to know whether an approach inspired by BE could identify hidden influences on behaviour and help us to construct hypotheses and interventions to tackle the problem.

A review of the literature led us to divide the discipline into four key territories: individual factors (e.g. hot states), social influences (peer influence, mimicry, reciprocity), choice environment and local environment influences (physical, visual or auditory influences). We recruited people who were planning to go to a pub, but who had no specific experience of ethnography, to participate in a mass ethnographic research game. We assigned participants to one of four detective teams, each inspired by a famous sleuth whose style embodied the principles of one of four areas of behavioural economics:

• Miss Marple: individual factors
• Hercule Poirot: social influences
• Sherlock Holmes: local environment influences
• Lieutenant Columbo: choice environment influences

Each team was charged with the task of collecting evidence (observations, pictures, videos) from their pub visits that made the case for their point of view. We briefed our detectives and provided prompts specific enough to give them direction without leading them to a particular observation.

So what did we find? First, the prevalence of choice influences. Participants ordering soft drinks noticed bar staff asking ‘Gin or vodka with that?’ and when taking an order for a spirit bar staff would reply ‘Double?’ This was evidence of staff priming a particular type of drinking behaviour. Furthermore, a minimum spend limit was often imposed on credit and debit card purchases, which meant people bought twice as many drinks as they wanted and drank more quickly – just for the convenience of paying by card.

Social influences also played a role. The British convention of taking turns to buy drinks in rounds meant people bought and drank drinks they didn’t really want.

Environmental influences such as loud music (people sipped their drinks rather than attempt to make themselves heard) and decor (posters featuring words such as energy, vigour, excitement) were offered as suspected influences on drinking behaviour.

Examples of ‘consumption momentum’ – an individual factor – were also seen: you keep drinking because the drink is available, not because you want it.

Our findings enabled us to develop ideas for various nudges that might change behaviour:

• Reducing standard unit sizes by, say, a half, would mean you had to go to the bar twice as often (a ‘partitioning device’).
• Cash-only bars would ensure customers were continually reminded of their spending and consumption, doing away with the intangibility of card purchases and minimum spend policies.
• Express queues at the bar dedicated to customers ordering soft drinks could increase soft drink consumption.
• Table service would discourage people from buying drinks in rounds, provide natural breaks or cooling-off periods, and so partition consumption. It would also reduce movement and energy levels in bars.
• Quieter music and somewhere to put down your drink might also slow down drinking.

To reduce demand economists increase prices. But it seems there might also be a behavioural economics solution to binge drinking. Giving ethnography a behavioural economic focus identifies hidden influences on behaviour, and could lead to more targeted and efficient interventions – just one way BE can help us improve our industry’s approaches.

Orlando Wood is managing director of BrainJuicer Labs