This report is intended for any practitioners working to promote responsible recreation behaviour, whether rangers collecting data in the field or policy-makers interested in incorporating behavioural insights. It provides the tools to run a behavioural insights project, using the Behavioural Insights Team’s ‘TESTS’ methodology (Target, Explore, Solution, Trial, Scale). To illustrate the TESTS phases, it uses the methodology and findings from a project undertaken by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to reduce wildlife disturbance by dog-walkers.
The broad goal of the project was to test how behavioural insights can be used to promote responsible recreation, with particular focus on reducing bird disturbance by dog-walkers in the two pilot sites. The key challenge of responsible recreation is to ensure protection of the natural environment without restricting people’s access to and enjoyment of the outdoors. Behavioural insights are a promising solution to this challenge, as this approach typically avoids limiting people’s options, but instead makes changes to the context in which people make decisions in order to make it easier or more attractive to adopt the desirable behaviour.