Presentation from LTS Sheffield

1. Pete Dyson
@pete_dyson
pete.dyson@transportforhumans.com
Beyond ‘Carrots & Sticks’
Why it’s time to replace this unhelpful
transport policy metaphor

3. From seeing people
as the problem…
…to solving
people’s problems.

4. Montague, E. P. (Ed.). (1849). Narrative of the late expedition to the Dead Sea: From a diary by one of the party. Carey and Hart.
ORIGINS: a 19th century donkey race

5. ORIGINS: behaviourists and economists
• Behaviourist psychology and neoliberal economics
• Classical & operant conditioning
• A vital contribution. Not wrong, but not entirely right.
The Behaviourists The Quadrant of Operant Conditioning

6. PRESENT DAY – discourse in transport debate

7. Adapted from:
Piatkowski, D. P., Marshall, W. E., & Krizek, K. J. (2019). Carrots versus sticks: assessing intervention effectiveness and
implementation challenges for active transport. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(1), 50-64.

8. STRENGTHS
✓ Easy to communicate within organisations
✓ Simple to model responses as individuals reacting to incentives
✓ The ‘stick’ approach can be effective for ‘one-shot’ learning and deterants. E.g. fines
✓ Faced with a climate emergency, sticks can feel obviously necessary
✓ Consistent with the wider mental model of travel behaviour…
We use it because it suits us (transport professionals)

9. WE ARE
HOMO SAPIENS
NOT
HOMO TRANSPORTICUS

10. LIMITATIONS
✓ Omits failings of existing public and active transport design – sticks are really punishments for societies
failings.
✓ Intrinsic motivations – lacks insight into what people already want to do. [see next slide]
✓ Top down – behaviour changes because we (transport) made it happen. Denies external influence.
✓ Individualistic – misunderstands travel influence within households/neighbourhoods/organisations.
✓ Forgets ‘derived demand’ for travel – the want/need to travel is socially constructed + neglects many trips are
unwanted and imposed necessities.
✓ Motor-normative* and reversible – the metaphor positions the current reality as status quo, with carrots and
sticks layered on top. Not as societal transformation. Carrots and sticks are not radical enough.
✓ Hetrogenous effects – carrot and stick bundles risk treating populations, not people. A carrot for journeys, or
for specific individuals? Sticks for driving can be carrots for other modes?
*Walker, I., Tapp, A., & Davis, A. (2022). Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard. PsyArXiv. December 14.
Piatkowski, D. P., Marshall, W. E., & Krizek, K. J. (2019). Carrots versus sticks: assessing intervention effectiveness and implementation
challenges for active transport. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(1), 50-64.

11. Bath & North East Somerset Council (2020) Transport Delivery Action Plan For Bath
https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Bath%20Report%20Aug%202020%20-%20Final%20edited.pdf

12. But we’ve run out of carrots*,
We’re going to need more and bigger sticks.
*we tried some carrots and they didn’t work well enough, give us the stick!

14. ALTERNATIVES Beyond carrot and stick
• ASI – Avoid, Shift, Improve
• COM-B – Capability, Opportunity, Motivation
• ISM – Individual, Social, Material
• Upstream-Downstream – societal model of behaviour change

17. Upstream-downstream model of behaviour
(Behavioural Insights Team, 2023; Verplanken & Wood, 2006)

18. Pete Dyson,
Author of 'Transport for Humans' and travel behaviour researcher at University of Bath
Twitter: @pete_dyson
Email: pete.dyson@transportforhumans.com
Five ways beyond ‘carrots & Sticks’
1. Be conscious of how you, and others, use Carrots & Sticks.
Why is it being used? What is it leaving out?
2. Commission social research to understand what people
are thinking, feeling and doing
3. Go from ‘sticks’ to addressing systematic inequities and
reducing harm
4. Look ‘upstream’, like tackling origins of trip generation
5. Invest in evaluation, public engagement and
communicate the impacts