Tip #794: Change Behavior With COM-B

If you want to change behavior, you may want to explore the COM-B model. It emphasizes that, for a behavior to occur, people must have the capability, opportunity and motivation to perform it.

The COM-B Model

Capability

Capability is the knowledge, skills and abilities to engage in the behavior. There are two components to capability:

  • psychological (knowledge or psychological strength, skill or stamina) and
  • physical (physical strength, skill or stamina).

Opportunity

Opportunity is the outside factors which make the behavior possible. These opportunity factors may be:

  • physical (environmental-time, locations, resources) or
  • social (societal-cultural norms, social cues).

Motivation

Motivation is the brain processes that direct our decisions and behaviors. Motivational brain processes may be:

  • automatic (desires, impulses, inhibitions, etc.) or
  • reflective (plans and evaluations).

Health researchers have used COM-B in studies to encourage people to use hearing aids, lose weight, stop smoking, be more physically active, etc. They have used the Behavior Change Wheel to determine what interventions might be effective.

The Behavior Change Wheel

The Behavior Change Wheel is based on COM-B. It consists of three layers. COM-B is the hub.

Three Layers

  1. Opportunity is divided into social and physical sections.
  2. Motivation is divided into automatic and reflective sections. And
  3. Capability is divided into psychological and physical sections.

The understanding is that interventions need to change one or more of them in such a way as to put the system into a new configuration and minimize the risk of it reverting.

Nine Intervention Functions

Surrounding the hub is a layer of nine intervention functions to choose from based on the particular COM-B analysis that has been made.

These functions are:

  1. Education,
  2. Persuasion,
  3. Incentivization,
  4. Coercion,
  5. Training,
  6. Enablement,
  7. Modeling,
  8. Environmental Restructuring and
  9. Restrictions.

Seven Policy Categories

The outer layer, the rim of the wheel, identifies seven policy categories that can support the delivery of these intervention functions.

The policy categories are:

  1. Guidelines,
  2. Environmental/Social Planning,
  3. Communication/Marketing,
  4. Legislation,
  5. Service Provision,
  6. Regulation, and
  7. Fiscal Measures.

You can see the wheel in Figure 2.

The Behavior Change Wheel provides a systematic way of identifying relevant intervention functions and policy categories. This is based on what is understood about the target behavior. General intervention functions can be translated into specific techniques for changing behavior.

How could you use the Behavior Change Wheel?

May your learning be sweet.

Deborah

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