Behavioral Science A-ZExplore the myriad of ingredients that influence

how we see the world and the risks in it

Resilience Requires Behavior Change

Presentation of Data ResilienceChanged behavior

Changing the Conversation – Flood Economics

• Increase decision-makers’

awareness of flood risk and its

relevance to their communities;

• Increase their knowledge of how

to mitigate a community’s flood

risk; and

• Encourage people to share this

knowledge with key industry

experts and affected stakeholders,

creating a ripple effect.

Changing the Conversation - IMMERSED

• Reaching decision makers on

their terms

• Recast how people perceive

risks

• Inspire users to take impactful

mitigation actions:

Invest in flood insurance

Personally mitigate their

properties

Work with their community to

prioritize mitigation

Behavioral Science Building Blocks

Cognitive

Bias

Codex

Behavioral

science affects

everything

that you do

Personalize and Relate

Homophily & Likeability

• “…evaluators implicitly

gravitated toward and

explicitly fought [to hire]

candidates with whom they

felt an emotional spark of

commonality.” – Rivera, 2012

• Hiring without considering

bias historically results in a

50% rate of failure – Harvard

Business Review

Overcoming Homophily & Likeability

• Partner with local

representative or

ambassador

• Demonstrate understanding

of local values & priorities

• Identify natural touch points

• Listen actively

• Be authentic

14

Hyperbolic Discounting & Availability

• Immediate gratification is better than

future gratification, even if the future

payout is more

• Our decisions are swayed by how

easily we can recall an event

occurring.

• We misinterpret the past if we can't

imagine the future.

Overcoming Hyperbolic

Discounting &

Availability

• Frame future risk in

present terms

• Help communities

visualize risk

• Focus on local examples

17

Collaborate

19

Commitment Bias

• You have a 65% of completing a goal if you commit to someone

• If you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed,

your chance of success raises to 95% - American Society of Training and

Development (ASTD)

Leveraging Commitment Bias

• Engage influencers early

• Encourage decision makers to be

open & on the record

• Find opportunities for public

commitment to improve resilience

• Set milestones for public updates

• Celebrate progress publicly

Get permission to have a

quote expressing

commitment to use in

outreach materials

22

23

IKEA Effect

“Participants who built a simple IKEA

storage box themselves were willing to

pay much more for the box than a group

of participants who merely inspected a

fully built box.” – Journal of Consumer

Psychology

Leveraging the IKEA Effect

• Encourage and build a

community’s self-efficacy

• Help the community create

a sense of belonging

• Involve them throughout

the entire mapping

process

Equip

Chunking

• Short-term memory only holds about 7 “chunks” of information, which fade from

your brain in about 20 seconds – Nielsen Norman Group

• Our behavior is greatly influenced by what grabs our attention, and we are more

likely to be drawn to things that we can easily encode and process - MINDSPACE

Leveraging the Benefits of Chunking

• Encourage individual community

members to take smaller mitigation

steps by reframing what counts as

“mitigation action”

• Show how each small

step/individual mitigation

project fits into the larger picture

30

Charity Hazard

• When people don’t properly prepare, because they believe the government or

another organization will provide aid when necessary

• If it’s bad enough, someone will help me

Overcoming Charity Hazard

• Norm concrete steps that people

can take to help themselves before a

disaster or flood happens

• Emphasize how quickly a homeowner

can get back to normal with flood

insurance instead of relying on

uncertain government assistance

Now it’s time to try out what you’ve learned

and build self efficacy!

HANDOUT

QUESTIONS

For More Information:

Meg Bartow, Resilience Action Partners

meg.bartow@ogilvy.com

Tom Glenn, FEMA

thomas.glenn@fema.dhs.gov