Behavioural Economics: Employee and Customer Behaviour

Learn how to motivate positive behaviour change

On this three-week course, you’ll learn how to promote positive behaviour change in your employees through effective incentives and an awareness of default behaviours.

You’ll also explore customer behaviours and the role commitment plays in their decision-making.

Through an understanding of incentivisation, default behaviours, and commitment, you’ll recognise the role these play in motivating positive behaviour change in both your employees and customers.

Explore how mental accounting affects the response to incentives

To help increase the success of your incentives, you’ll explore the role of reference points and mental accounting.

You’ll also examine defaults – the pre-selected options available if an individual doesn’t make an active choice. You’ll explore how they exert influence, even if they have significant consequences, and why they work so effectively in anything from pension choices to hospital care.

Understand the use of different incentives

Exploring different types of incentives such as financial and pro-social, you’ll learn how successful they are in affecting behaviour change.

You’ll also explore the difference between incentives and commitments and consider how you could use commitment pledges to change behaviour in a professional setting.

Understand key learnings in behavioural science

By the end of the course, you’ll have a solid understanding of the behavioural economic factors that can influence your employees and customers.

Guided by Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science, you’ll have the skills and knowledge to start pushing for positive behavioural change in your workplace.

This course is designed for anyone who wants to learn more about human behaviours and needs.

It will be particularly useful if you are a professional managing, building, or developing a team.

This course is designed for anyone who wants to learn more about human behaviours and needs.

It will be particularly useful if you are a professional managing, building, or developing a team.

• Discuss the use of different types of incentives and how well they can effect behaviour change.
• Examine the role of reference points and mental accounting in conditioning the response to incentives.
• Differentiate between incentives which have risk and/or time components and those which don’t, and think about how to use both.
• Explore the relationship between financial incentives and pro-social motives.
• Consider the widespread presence of defaults and the role of inertia in much of their (and others’) decision-making.
• Discuss ways to improve default options based on key learnings in behavioural science.
• Discuss the role of ethics in nudging, with special reference to the case of defaults.