Download Toward a Contemporary Behavioural Science Basis for Effective

Regulatory Reform: Incorporating
Social and Behavioral Science
Principles into Law and Regulation
Purpose: to introduce our research towards
a scientific behavioural theory of law
J.C. Becker, A.E. Luloff and J.C. Finley
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA, USA
P.V. Martin and A.L. Kennedy
The University of New England,
Armidale, NSW, Australia
• Regulation is one instrument which may help to
achieve behavioural shifts towards sustainability.
• Regulation is subject to criticism for insufficient
behavioural effectiveness and excessive economic
cost.
• A scientific ‘continuous improvement’ of regulation
is not possible without a clear theory on which to
base empirical learning.
• Aspects of compliance are studied by behavioral
economists, sociologists, psychologists, educators,
political scientists, and lawyers…
• ..but there is no specific behavioural theory of
environmental law upon which to base behavioural
science investigation to improve regulation.
Some perspectives on compliance
• Law
– Regulatory theory (rational actors)
– Deviance vs conformity (criminality/aberrance)
• Social psychology
– Social conflict, power, influence, persuasion
• Political science
– Regulation as a social contract
• Sociology
– Systems approaches
• Economics
– Rational actor, balance of incentives + uncertainty
• Social marketing
– Functional marketing support for the legal instrument
Perspectives from social marketing
• Marketing is a functional polyglot, embedding subtheories drawn from behavioural research, systems
thinking and pragmatic integration.
• Social marketing is a specific version, with a
defined ‘toolkit’ and a body of documented
empirical studies.
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Communication approach
Commitment approach
Decision and implementation supports.
Demonstrated application to regulatory implementation.
• The potential to marry regulation and social
marketing to begin to frame a theory.
The proposed experiment
Research question:
How can social marketing potentiate, or replace, a
regulated pricing intervention?
Experiment:
• US rural communities, socio-demographic variables
• Property owners who use water resources under
unmetered/ priced conditions
• Introduce metering with/without social marketing
• 4 quadrant design + demographic variables
The empirical evaluation
4 quadrant states
1. No regulatory intervention;
2. Unsupported regulatory intervention;
3. Regulatory intervention supported by social marketing
and
4. Social marketing unsupported by regulation
Evaluation
• Stand-alone and combined effects of intervention
types
• Demographic variable impacts on different
interventions
Implications:
A theory of when and how (social) marketing can
improve regulatory (pricing) strategies
The independent variables
to be evaluated
What next?
• Proposed trans-disciplinary collaboration to create
the integrated basis for a behavioural theory of
environmental law
• Essential for doctrinal perspective to be
subordinated to (but still inform) other disciplinary
perspectives on doctrine and institutions
• Development of a more radical perspective to help
law to meet the increasing demands upon it