The INSPIRE Framework

Implementation Intentions

Norms

Salience

Procedural Justice

Incentives

Reputation and Credibility

Ease

Discussion

Conclusion

References

Abstract

Public administrators rely on written communications to send information to citizens and stakeholders, and they are among the heaviest users of the postal service. Behavioral science research has identified several techniques that public administrators can use to increase compliance with written requests and, in turn, increase effectiveness. Currently, however, many written communications from government bodies are not written in a manner that utilizes these techniques. It remains an ongoing challenge for public administrators to identify, understand, and use these techniques in the written communications sent by their organizations. This article presents a framework capturing seven prominent techniques in a simple mnemonic—INSPIRE—that is already being used by several government bodies in Australia. It also provides practical examples of how to use each technique and demonstrates that using these techniques could result in large aggregate improvements in effectiveness and socially desirable outcomes of public administrators’ written communications.

The INSPIRE Framework

The INSPIRE framework is designed to be a practical tool for improving written communications (e.g., letters, emails, notices on websites) in which there is a request to perform a specific behavior. Every letter of the framework represents a technique that can be used in written communications. Each of the techniques in the framework—implementation intentions, norms, salience, procedural justice, incentives, reputation, and ease—has been demonstrated in previous research to increase compliance with written requests to perform a behavior under certain conditions. The framework is summarized in table 1.