A pint glass with a line etched at the two-thirds mark could help people drink less beer without thinking about it. That is the kind of intervention—a "nudge" that redesigns the environment rather than lecturing people—that this project will test at scale. The problem is stark: unhealthy diets, alcohol, and tobacco cluster in deprived communities, widening health inequalities. Traditional information campaigns barely move the needle and can make things worse. Evidence for nudges is promising but thin—most studies happen in labs, not in real supermarkets, bars, or canteens. This project will run the most ambitious coordinated set of field studies yet, measuring how well nudges like smaller plates, rearranged shelves, or differently shaped glasses actually cut consumption. Laboratory experiments will unpick *why* they work, while international workshops and a Behaviour Change Summit will push the findings into policy and practice. If it succeeds, the impact is quietly structural. Supermarket layouts, pub glassware, and cafeteria portion sizes could be redesigned to make healthier choices the easy, default option—reducing disease and narrowing inequality without asking anyone to read a leaflet.
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Reducing food, alcohol and tobacco consumption would dramatically reduce non-communicable disease and, since these behaviours cluster by deprivation, would also reduce health inequalities. However, progress in achieving such behaviour change is slow. Traditional approaches to behaviour change involve providing information with, at best, modest population-level effects and sometimes increased inequalities. Conversely, Choice Architecture interventions (“Nudges”) have potentially larger, more equitable effects, involving re-designing environments e.g. reducing plate size to reduce food consumption. However, evidence of effectiveness in real-world settings and understanding of mechanisms are limited. We will bridge this knowledge gap through a novel collaboration between behavioural and cognitive sciences. In the most ambitious co-ordinated set of studies to date, we propose field studies to estimate effect sizes of promising Choice Architecture interventions to reduce food, alcohol and tobacco consumption. Enabled by unprecedented collaborations, these will be conducted in supermarkets, bars and cafeterias and interventions optimised through laboratory studies determining mechanisms. We will run international workshops, public engagement activities and a Behaviour Change Summit to facilitate implementing the evidence generated, overseen by an Implementation Advisory Panel. This will enable us to realise our vision of accelerating progress in changing behaviour by re-designing environments to improve health for all.
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