Consolidating Behaviour Change Approaches: A Theoretical and Practical Reduction

There is little consensus about how behaviour change specialists should go about choosing from the large number of available approaches that which is most likely to make their program effective. Here we engage in a systematic consolidation, classifying approaches into four categories, based on their explanatory goals: Psychological approaches focus on the proximate psychological determinants of behaviour, Stage approaches seek to divide the target population into categories according to their state of preparedness for behaviour change, Environmental approaches target the physical and social ecological context of behaviour, and Process approaches are concerned with the process of designing behavioural interventions. The elements characteristic of each of these four classes are then identified and used to produce consolidated models of each class, which identify the specific claims made by each class about how behaviour is determined. These four consolidated models are then amalgamated into a single generic framework, which shows how the various classes relate to one another in determining behaviour and suggests how those designing programs of behaviour change could use behaviour determination processes for insight. We argue that academic and behaviour change practitioners should combine their efforts at theory development and testing if we are to find better means of changing behaviour in future.