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Cristiano Codagnone IPTS Behavioural Economics Seminar Series Session 4 Seville, 9 June 2011
To guide the motions of the human puppet, it is necessary to know the wires by which he is moved
M. Helvetius, 1810, A treatise on Man, his intellectual faculties and his education
Not only BE and Nudging
Contents
Part I Part II Three Disclaimers Obesity as anchoring in a social network
Part III Privacy: survey results and BE concepts Part IV ICT for better health
Part I: 3 disclaimers
Syncretism Questions rather than answers Criticism
?
foundationalism vs pragmatism in evidence based policy-making Network analysis Ontological certainty vs ontological unpredictability
Pragmatism Ideas become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience (William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking, 1907 Pragmatism in policy evaluation User friendly and user oriented aggregation of facts using with craftsmanship all available tools Policy makers and politicians do not read or read at most 11 minutes a day, they form their ideas in exchanges with lobbyists, think tanks, and consultants, so lets give them a few factoids for the press release: eHealth to potentially increase GDP by X%
Not only BE and Nudging
2.6B
LOW
1.4B
HIGH
Asking the right questions instead of providing one fit all answers can help spotting the blind spots of policy making Including disentangling what is fad and fashion about BENU from how it can contribute, among all other approaches and instruments, to improve evidence use in policy making
Big Society and Nudging a nice way for the Cameron Cabinet to say small state and distract public attention from spending cut?
The we know better: First came the Jacobins Then the Bolshevik And now the Nudgers?
BE not really a revolution: So different from Game Theory? Still agents maximising a preference relation over some space of consequences and the solution in most cases still involves standard equilibrium concepts
Who nudge the nudger? Policy makers also prone to same biases and not necessarily motivated by maximization of the public good
BE intrinsic limits: Only the individual, groups&institutions? Anchoring from the Framingham Heart Study (3 cohorts over 31 years) versus experiments mostly with students, who know they are observed, have small stakes, etc
A Tsunami in 3 decades
Not predicted nor prevented a Tsunami of poor health, entirely mediated by modernised lifestyles, has hit our shores on both sides of the Atlantic
( + 125.3 % ) ( + 250.0% ) ( + 85.5% ) ( + 151.5% ) ( + 131.4% ) ( + 61.9% ) ( + 41.4% ) ( + 39.1% ) ( + 93.1% ) ( 137.9% ) ( 45.9% )
OECD Health Data ( * ) data comes from measurement, all other are self-reported
3-4 Decades
Environmental factors Food relative prices Retail /logistic (fresh food) Image of, exposure to, food Information, education Build environment Family structure TV and digital leisure Healthcare delivery
Adverse outcomes Diabetes II Syndrome X Obesity Hypertension Hyperlipidemias Hyperinsulinemia CDV diseases
Energy Output - Transportation costs - Food preparation / subsistence costs - Micro environmental thermal costs - Leisure activity costs - Work/ occupation costs
The Framingham Heart Study: basic information (*) Interconnected social network of 12,067 people, assessed repeatedly from 1971 till 2003:
1948 5029 enrolled 1971: most of the children of original cohorts and their spouses enrolled 2002: third generation enrolled
(*) Christakis, N.A. and J.H. Fowler, The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med, 2007. 357(4): p. 370-9
Visualisation
http://www.nejm.org/action/showMediaPlayer?doi=10.1056%2FNEJMsa066082&aid=NEJMsa066082_attach_1&a rea=
Not only BE and Nudging
Findings
Directional influence in friendship ties
If an ego stated that an alter was his/her friend, the egos chances of becoming obese appeared to increase by 57%, if the alter became obese Between mutual friends the egos risk of obesity increased 171% if an alter became obese No statistically significant relation when the friendship was perceived by the alter but not the ego
Discussion
Authors conclude they have compellingly shown that obesity may spread in social networks in ways shaped by the nature of social ties Assuming data have been correctly tortured, why is it so?
Alter directly influences egos behaviour Alter changes egos norms of acceptability:
Special case of anchoring to your alter as implicit reference point So as increased BMI spread our anchor may also increase
(*) Christakis, N.A. and J.H. Fowler, The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network. N Engl J Med, 2008. 358(21): p. 2249-58
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Ormerod P and Wiltshire G, Binge drinking the UK: a social network phenomenon. Mind and Society 2009. 8(1): p. 135152
(*) Ormerod, P. N Squared: Public Policy and the Power of Networks, RSA 21st Enlightenment. Quoting D Watts. A simple model of global cascades on random networks,in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99, 5766 5771, 2002.
Not only BE and Nudging
Part III: Privacy Industry knows it better Selective survey results Typical case for prospect theory Information ineffective Privacy 2.0: ownership and PDV
(*) Insurers Test Data Profiles to Identify Risky Clients Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2010
Not only BE and Nudging
(*) Insurers Test Data Profiles to Identify Risky Clients Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2010
Not only BE and Nudging
(*) Most reported in Acquisti, A., & Grossklags, J. (2008). What can behavioral economics teach us about privacy? In Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies, and Practices (pp. 363-377). New York and London: Auerbach Publications; some confirmed by Eurobarometer Survey on eID (Joint IPTS/DG INFSO, DG Justice project)
Not only BE and Nudging
Complex life-cycle of information in digital society has multitude of consequences individuals can hardly imagine
Two unknowns: what privacy-relevant outcomes, with what consequences Even when aware about risks, they miscalculate probability and magnitude of occurrence Privacy risks by-product : privacy good attached to other goods in a bundle Privacy costs and benefits difficult to estimate, they are immaterial: ambiguity about probability and value of outcomes
Conclusion
Information ok Nudging also good (change default values: cooling off periods, etc) But they cannot substitute liabilities, bans, etc
(*) Howells, G. , The Potential and Limits of Consumer Empowerment by Information. Journal of Law and Society, 2005. 32 (3): p. 349-70
(*) K. Shilton et al, 2009, Designing the Personal Data Stream: Enabling Participatory Privacy in Mobile Personal Sensing
(*) A. Barabasi, Network Medicine From Obesity to the Diseasome, N Engl J Med, 357, 4: 404-407
Not only BE and Nudging
Courtesy of Prof Josep Roca (from his presentation Predictive Medicine: the view of the clinician)
Not only BE and Nudging
Courtesy of Prof Josep Roca (from his presentation Predictive Medicine: the view of the clinician)
Not only BE and Nudging
Predictive Capacity
Low Wellness
Authors visual essay
Not only BE and Nudging
Illness Zone
Immagine nodes are health data and links are their co-occurrence with other health data for each of the N=individuals
And immagine a third (N=individuals in good or poor health) ax We may verify that 20% of key health data have 80% of co-occurences explaining poor or good health!
Not only BE and Nudging
<<
Crow dsourcing of simple but High Yield Health Data data intensive predictive modelling
Industry script in the US is clear Americans need to be more active and take greater responsibility for their diets M. Kent, Coca-Colas CEO (Wall Street Journal Oct 7 2009, op-ed in response to envisaged taxes on soft drinks)
NEITHER
Individual responsibility (you get what you deserve)
OBESITY
NOR
State Big Brother (I care and choose for you)
BUT
Libertarian paternalism (architect/ steer choices)
Conclusive thoughts
Final considerations
One, certainly useful, thing is BE and its experiments
Refining evidence and approach can lead us closer to the never ending process of approximation to know the world
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Evidence based choice architectures & public health policies High yield Health data