Installations for Civic Culture: Behavioral Policy Interventions to Promote Social Sustainability

Paulius Yamin (), Luis Artavia-Mora, Benita Martunaite and Shaon Lahiri
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Paulius Yamin: Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 75006 Paris, France
Luis Artavia-Mora: Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Benita Martunaite: Behavioural Lab LT, 14184 Vilnius, Lithuania
Shaon Lahiri: Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: Achieving more equitable, safer, and resilient societies—crucial dimensions of social sustainability—depends on durable transformations in people’s behavior. Traditional policy interventions attempt to influence people’s behavior in different ways, such as increased policing, fines, or awareness campaigns, but often have limited effects because they fail to systematically address local determinants of behavior. In this paper, we analyze two complex behavioral policy interventions to illustrate how installation theory can provide a framework to systematically analyze and design for large-scale behavioral change to support social sustainability. We focus on two of Antanas Mockus’ iconic “civic culture” interventions to reduce deaths in traffic accidents and domestic violence in Colombia. To study them, we collected intervention reports, citizens’ narratives, creators’ accounts and press articles to identify their main characteristics and behavioral techniques. In our results, we find that the civic culture approach used in these two interventions addresses physical, psychological and social determinants of behavior in ways that reduce reactance and promote mutual regulation and collective agency. By unraveling the essential factors of behavioral influence, installation theory and related frameworks provide a useful guide to structure, analyze and report interventions that address the behavioral components of social sustainability.

Keywords: installations; social sustainability; civic culture; behavioral change; policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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