Reflections on how policies could drive compliance but may fail to create sustained change in the absence of effective feedback systems. 

• The problem: policy-led behaviour change often plateaus once incentives and campaigns fade.

• The proposition: to sustain change, we must design feedback policies that give people fast, clear signals about the consequences of their actions.

• The promise: this piece will show what that means and how to think about it.

Role of Behaviour Change

Behaviour change has been touted as the most effective solution for most of our environmental challenges. Be it reducing plastic waste, lowering electricity and fuel consumption, switching to green products, or consuming organic food. As demand begins to tilt towards more environmentally responsible products and services, this can potentially change production systems and the way of future industrialisation. So far, the efforts for promoting the use of LEDs, segregating waste (dry waste and wet waste), promoting public transport usage and the multiple drives for tree plantation have been top-down, i.e. driven by policies, programs or incentives. The DELP (Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme) program was a success because of high subsidies and wide-scale distribution of the lights. The drive to create 100 solar cities in India is also a policy push and will create more consumption of electricity generated from Solar PV. All these are important for creating large-scale change. However, its sustainability depends on how the demand is shaped in the long run. So far, the efforts have been more of a supply push rather than a change in demand and preferences.

What Feedback Systems Teach Us

Behaviour change cannot be just a supply push strategy. It also requires some changes in the preferences and belief systems of the people. How can this be curated with more intentionality? I have been reading the writings of Donella Meadows since I started my systems thinking journey. And after more than 15 years, her writings still fascinate me. In her popular article, dancing with Systems, she mentions an important point – “Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems”. I must have read this many years ago, but it has truly started sinking in recent times. What does “Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems” really mean? I will provide a few examples here, one coming from her writings and others from my observations of systems in the real world. A feedback policy is a rule or design choice that not only prescribes behaviour but also ensures that information about the results of that behaviour comes back quickly and directly to the actor.

Her example talks about the energy efficiency gains in the Netherlands and how serendipitously they discovered the power of feedback. There was once a new housing development in the Netherlands, where, by accident, the electric meters were installed in the basements of some houses and in the front halls of other, otherwise identical, houses. Electricity use in the houses where the meters were easily visible was thirty per cent less than in the houses where the meters were down below and out of sight. The only difference was feedback. People who saw the meter reading more often ended up moderating their consumption better.

In India, the Gujarat Solar Policy promotes the installation of solar panels on individual households, enabling residents to generate their own electricity. When households produce surplus electricity, it is transferred to the central grid, and they receive financial incentives based on the quantity fed into the grid. This distribution model incorporates financial feedback for incentivising people to adopt solar PV. While also reaffirming the community’s belief in efficient energy use. All of which is contributing to the growth of rooftop solar PV systems over time.

Simple Feedback Systems

To me, feedback policies exist in the simplest manner and in the simplest systems in our daily lives. For people who drive vehicles – two-wheelers and four-wheelers – the simplest form of feedback we receive is through the speedometer. With some advancement in safety features, the vehicle also makes a beep that alarms us against high speeds. Listening to the beep, we can choose to be more mindful of our speeds and make decisions accordingly. 

People who are fond of dancing and some who might have gone to dance studios, would have noticed large glass mirrors on the walls. These are done with a purpose. They allow us to watch our moves and learn how to better master them. For groups, it allows for better coordination in order to improve the synchronisation of the dance moves. The mirrors provide us with real-time information feedback and thereby allow us to learn and make changes for improvement. 

Musicians, when performing live, often wear in-ear monitors (IEMS) because, when on stage, they need an effective way to monitor their performance. Through this live feedback, they can modulate their vocals and instruments to stay on key and on tempo, as they hear all instruments, including their own, clearly throughout the performance. An important feedback system for self-regulating the system of musicians. Such feedback policies embed learning into the system and thereby allow for more opportunities for behaviour change. 

Humans are complex self-adaptive systems; we can learn and evolve. For us to be able to learn, we need to receive non-ambiguous feedback, preferably closer in time and space. The faster the feedback, the better the opportunity to make changes. The popular book One Minute Manager drives home this point very well. It encourages giving prompt feedback, either quick praise or reprimand, whenever necessary. The management practice here is to reduce the time delay between cause (actions of the employee) and the effect (feedback from the boss), which could come back and affect the cause (reinforce the employee’s actions or lead to changes). 

Climate Action as Delayed Feedback

The problem of climate change has become what it has because, for a very long time, the masses couldn’t clearly see it coming. We were partially blinded towards the consequences of our actions. Both the industry and society. Even science took a few years to become virtually certain that human actions are responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it is altering Earth’s climate. Today, we are noticing that climate change has become a reality with small changes taking place in the seasons, temperatures and rainfall. It is out in the open and no longer camouflaged in the scientific reports and publications. Actions towards climate change are delayed by a few decades because we chose to wait to see the consequences before we chose to act. Meadows says, “If we wait to see consequences in the real world before changing our actions, then we have waited for too long”. I think climate action fits here very well. 

She also highlights that “Quick, tight feedback promotes not only learning but responsibility”. What we are missing today is a bit of both. And for systems to change for the good, we need more learning and responsibility, along with self-accountability. Policy push and regulatory changes should be accompanied by feedback policies that self-regulate the system. She further highlights, “Intrinsic responsibility means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision-making directly and quickly to the decision-makers.” The adherence to the policy or regulation becomes part of the system as a new behaviour. The dance master can teach you moves and provide guidance. The music teacher can teach you the technicalities of music. But when you dance or create music, proper feedback systems could help sustain the learning process.    

Questions for Reflections

We need to draw parallels from the above examples for improving our environmental behaviour. 

• What would be the equivalent of a speedometer for reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

• What is the “dance mirror” for reducing inorganic waste generation?

• What is the “In Ear Monitor” equivalent for a city’s air quality or water use?

Some questions worth pondering over for us to start seeing systems around us:

• In the systems you engage with, where is feedback currently too slow, too invisible, or too vague? 

• What is one simple change you think could be made in that system to tighten the feedback process?

For me, the people driving on the wrong side of the road in cities need a feedback mechanism to encourage them to change their behaviour. Wrong-side driving persists because penalties depend on occasional enforcement and are mostly implemented post facto. What kind of immediate, visible feedback could make the behaviour self-regulating? Perhaps some of the routes could be re-designed and continuously adapted in a manner that the most fuel-efficient and shortest path becomes the default choice, eliminating the need for people to break the rule.