Abstract

۱ | INTRODUCTION

۲ | THE CENTRAL PROPOSITION

۳ | DECISION-MAKING SHOULD BE VIEWED AS FOCUSSED ON ADDRESSING GOAL-RELATED PROBLEMS RATHER THAN IN TERMS OF UTILITY MAXIMIZATION

۴ | THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS ARE NOT SELF-EVIDENT; CHARACTERIZATION IS AN ACTIVE PROCESS OF MAKING CONNECTIONS

۵ | EXCEPT WHERE CONSTRAINED BY LACK OF IMAGINATION, HUMAN DECISIONMAKING USUALLY NECESSITATES THE USE OF STOPPING RULES AND SHORTCUTS TO PREVENT DECISION PARALYSIS OR DYSFUNCTIONAL DELAYS IN CHOOSING

۶ | PEOPLE ARE NOT ALWAYS OPEN TO COMPENSATION-BASED INDUCEMENTS TO CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOUR, FOR SOME CHANGES MAY CONFLICT WITH THEIR OPERATING RULES REGARDLESS OF THE COMPENSATION THAT WOULD ACCOMPANY THESE CHANGES

۷ | THE BEHAVIOUR OF CONSUMERS CAN BE PREDICTED, AT LEAST PROBABILISTICALLY, IF THEIR OPERATING RULES CAN BE UNCOVERED

۸ | CONCLUDING DISCUSSION

REFERENCES

Abstract

This article sets out a unified behavioural research programme that integrates compatible elements of old, new and evolutionary behavioural approaches to economics as an alternative to the dominant unified approach to economics based on rational choice theory and a Walrasian view of market coordination. However, the proposed programme can also be viewed as a general framework for interdisciplinary research on consumer behaviour. It employs the view of scientific research programmes proposed by Lakatos, setting out groups of ‘hard-core’ propositions and their associated ‘do’ and ‘do not’ rules for the conduct of researchers. The unifying theme is that evolution in the economy (and in human systems more generally) entails the creation, adoption and abandonment of rules for dealing effectively with open-ended choice problems that are bedevilled by infinite regress problems and cognitive challenges that people seek to address via personal repertoires of hierarchically related rules. To anticipate behaviour, researchers need to develop knowledge of these rules (including heuristics and routines), their functionality and the processes by which they get changed or prove difficult to change even where they cause problems.

۱ INTRODUCTION

This article sets out a unifying framework for understanding and studying behaviour in socio-economic systems. The framework is conducive to interdisciplinary behavioural research, and it could be used in applied fields as diverse as economics, marketing, criminology, public health policy and social policy. However, in calling it the ‘ONE behavioural’ approach, I am using the upper-case ‘ONE’ as an acronym that alludes to its origins and role in relation to behavioural economics: it entails a synthesis of compatible ideas from what are classified later in this introduction as ‘Old’, ‘New’ and ‘Evolutionary’ strands of behavioural economics, and it is offered as a means by which economics might become ‘behavioural’ in a more ambitious and more methodologically coherent way than has been evident over the past four decades. When applied to economics, the ‘ONE behavioural’ research programme offers a means for addressing the discipline’s traditional concerns with issues pertaining to the allocation of scarce resources. However, it entails viewing consumer behaviour in a way that overlaps considerably with how it has been viewed in marketing, a discipline that focuses on different issues and has historically been much more open than economics to taking a highly interdisciplinary approach to understanding consumer behaviour. Indeed, differences between those who focus on ‘economic’ issues and those who focus on ‘marketing’ issues in how they seek to make sense of consumer behaviour could vanish if researchers in marketing also adopt the ‘ONE behavioural’ approach as an organizing framework for their work. If they do so, they will find that it can readily accommodate much of the existing marketing literature on consumer behaviour.