Concept

EAST Framework

Also known as: Easy Attractive Social Timely

behavioural-insights-team framework policy

A four-part checklist developed by the UK's Behavioural Insights Team (led by David Halpern) to structure how they applied behavioral science to government policy: to increase the odds a desired behavior happens, make it Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely. Designed to be usable by non-specialists across public or private organizations, on campaigns large or small.

Easy — remove friction (e.g. switching a default from opt-in to opt-out; see Default Effect (Opt-Out vs Opt-In), BIT Make-It-Easy Studies). Elisabeth Costa gives a consent-specific example: telling users upfront how long a privacy notice takes to read roughly doubled how many opened it, and a "last chance to read this" framing raised opens by about 40% (see BIT Terms-and-Conditions Redesign Study). Harry Dry cites London restaurant Bob Bob Ricard's table-side "press for champagne" button as a pure friction-removal example — sales are the highest of any restaurant in London, credited to removing the small effort and awkwardness of flagging down a waiter (see Bob Bob Ricard Champagne Button Case; re-cited in Episode 109 with a third factor added — brevity, a three-word instruction).
Attractive — make the message stand out and feel personally relevant (see Cocktail Party Effect (Personalized Salience), BIT Make-It-Attractive Studies).
Social — invoke what others are doing (see Social Proof).
Timely — prompt people at the moment they're most receptive (see BIT Make-It-Timely Studies). Zoe Chance gives a criminal-justice example: text reminders to people accused of low-level offenses raised court-date attendance from 30% to 38%, an estimated 780 fewer people jailed for a missed date (see NYC Court-Date Text Reminder Study).

Episode 134's caveat: "Easy" is the most reliably effective single lever, but that doesn't mean the easiest option is always the best one. A simplified, shorter truancy letter cut absenteeism 40% more than the original (see Truancy Letter Simplification Study) and Ocado's single green delivery-slot icon shifted customers toward greener delivery times with no other incentive (see Ocado Green Delivery-Slot Icon Case) — genuine wins. But Uber has taken market share from London's black cabs largely by being easier to use, not necessarily cheaper or faster (see Uber vs London Black Cab Ease-Tradeoff Case), and blindly trusting an "easy" automated instruction has led drivers into real physical disaster (see Automation Bias (Blind Trust in Technology)).

Revisited in a course-announcement episode introducing Phill Agnew's own "Nudge Unit" training cohort (Episode 226), modeled explicitly on the EAST framework and BIT's original team. Two further BIT highlights cited from Halpern's book: an HMRC social-proof reminder line ("most people like you have paid their tax by now") collected an extra £1.6 million in 23 days, and bundling a low-cost loft-clearing service with a subsidized insulation offer — removing a hidden upstream friction point — produced a five-fold increase in installations (see BIT HMRC Tax Social-Norm and Insulation-Chunking Cases).

Discussed in

Episode 7 — 7- How the UK government nudges British people
Episode 66 — 66- The dark nudges behind digital manipulation (terms-and-conditions redesign)
Episode 76 — 76- Harry Dry-s favorite marketing examples (Bob Bob Ricard champagne button)
Episode 109 — 5 things I learned from psychology experts in 2022 (Bob Bob Ricard re-cited with a third factor, brevity)
Episode 134 — 134-there-s-a-problem-with-the-world-s-most-famous-nudge (the limits of "easy")
Episode 226 — 226-introducing-nudge-unit (HMRC tax social-norm and insulation-chunking cases)

EAST Framework

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