Antanas Mockus and a Multi-Regulated Society

Today I wanted to start unpacking some of the sessions from the De Lange Conference with a look at the first talk by Antanas Mockus, the former mayor of Bogota Colombia. Mockus is an especially interesting figure. Throughout the 80s and early 90′s, Bogota was a mess, and of particular concern were violent crimes and total lack of regard for traffic laws: obviously a bad combination.  With regard to traffic, Bogota was one of the most congested and chaotic cities in the world. Mockus was an academic, specifically a mathematician and philosopher, and he was first elected in 1994. His campaign was successful, and when he was elected, he faced some pretty dire challenges. The challenges of crime and traffic congestion are not new to cities, but Mockus’ approach was new, because he realized that what really needed to happen was cultural change, and unlike most people, he believed he could effect this. Mockus explained his philosophy on this matter at the conference. The obstacle to change is a familiar one: we have to start somewhere. He believed that there were many effective means of implementing cultural change that had not been explored or understood by the previous leadership of the city. Mockus offered the following diagram of the benefits of change in a system:

This graph really could apply to any kind of change.  Technology is a good example. The first people to buy an iPhone paid much more that people who bought it later, but the first movers are necessary to pave the way. Because they proved the iPhone marketable, later editions were produced at lower prices, and as the platform grew the number of users justified the creation of the app store, which in turn created additional benefit for the first movers.

Traffic management faces a similar paradox. Take bus ridership for instance. Everyone wishes that other people would take the bus so there would be less traffic on the road. Few people want to be the first movers to take the bus, because initially they’re likely to spend more time than solo drivers would, since there isn’t enough of a switch to buses to actually reduce congestion. But one can imagine how much faster the buses would go if everyone was taking this bus.  No traffic, no delay. This is a simple example, but it makes a point.  There are many things in this world that would be great if everyone did them, but there is usually some risk or cost to the first movers, and the benefits can be difficult to realize until a certain critical mass of adoption has occurred (i.e., transit is a waste of money if no one uses it). Too often in America, we begin to implement an idea and then bail on the idea right at the bottom of this curve. We see a negative benefit to society, not enough people participating, and we give up. Mockus’ key insight into creating collective action and cultural change is that people are multi-motivated, and therefore, multi-regulated. He explained to us his concept for influencing human behavior by identifying three main decision influencers: legal norms, moral norms, and cultural norms. Each of these influencers can be approached from the positive or the negative. He laid these out for us in a table like this:

Mockus’ contention was that in general, people, especially in the developed world, rely too heavily on the legal system to implement change. He argued that moral self-gratification and cultural approval were by far more powerful motivators.

He backed this up with a quick show-of-hands test, asking the room of over 400 people which of the six motivating factors would influence their behavior the most. While there were at least a few people who claimed to be motivated by all the different factors, by far the largest responses were for moral self-gratification and cultural approval. He told us jokingly “Well, maybe we all have such altruistic motivations because this is a room of well-educated people.” He then asked which factor we thought most motivated other people, and fear of sanction received the largest response. “That’s what everybody thinks,” Mockus said, “but I’ve done this same survey at prisons and found people there are motivated by the same things you are. Everybody says, ‘I’m motivated by moral self-gratification, but everyone else is motivated by legal sanction.’ ”

He then went on to offer us examples of how he had used this insight to enact changes. The first example was of the taxi drivers in Bogota. Taxis are a major part of Bogota’s transportation system, but the system was notoriously corrupt. Using cultural recognition as a motivating factor, Mockus came up with a program to reward drivers who had met three fairly simple qualifications: first, they greeted the passenger upon pickup; second, they took the passenger exactly where they wanted to go; third, they returned exact change to the passenger. Out of 30,000 taxi drivers, they found a group of about 150 who were well respected and clearly met these three qualifications. They created an association for these drivers, called the “Zebra Knights,” and made badges for their vehicles. (I think this is because the Taxis in Bogota have black and white stripes on them) The “Knights” were then encouraged to find and recruit other honorable taxi drivers for this program.

The program was immensely successful. People responded by showing a marked preference for “Zebra Knights” taxis over all others, and within a few years nearly every taxi driver in the city (over 25,000) had reformed their habits and joined the “Knights” or quit the taxi business.

Another fascinating example of passive change was the decision to distribute thousands of white thumbs-up cards and red thumbs-down cards. Citizens were instructed to carry these around with them as they traveled throughout the city, and to show thumbs up to people who they felt were behaving kindly or politely, and to show thumbs down cards to people who they felt were being rude, reckless, or violating a law. The idea rapidly spread throughout the city, and soon people were peacefully expressing their appreciation or disapproval for other peoples behavior either with the cards or just by hand. Both traffic and pedestrian violations dropped significantly.

One humorous initiative was put together when the city was facing a severe water shortage. Clearly the first-mover cost is the biggest challenge to a water conservation program; if only a few people try to save water, they are getting less without making much of an impact on the city overall. Mayor Mockus made a commercial featuring himself taking a shower, and turning off the water while he soaped and shampooed. By explaining the situation to the public and asking them to voluntarily help to fix it, the city’s water consumption dropped 14% in the first few months. Then, as the city was able to pass on the benefits of cost savings to some of these first movers, many more people began to get involved. Over the next few years the city’s water consumption dropped by over 40%, even as the population and number of households served by city water increased.

There are a number of other innovative exercises the mayor put in place, but I thought these were some of the most interesting. The question I have is, are there things like this we can do in Houston?

I especially like the idea of the ‘good behavior’ and ‘bad behavior’ cards. I wish I had one to show every time a driver parks in the crosswalk, or nearly runs me over exiting a parking garage.

I’ll wrap up here, but I’m very eager to hear your thoughts on this one. Would such an idea work in Houston?

I’ve got one recommendation: put a massive effort to change the dress-code for the city. No matter what your job is, it’s ridiculous to wear a suit in the middle of the Texas summer. This is purely a cultural artifact from our British heritage, and I think it’s time for us to let it go. There are plenty of nice looking combinations of linen shirts, polos, shorts (or light pants) and sandals, plus things like wide-brimmed hats or even parasols for the sun that we could use if we could let go of our cultural hang-ups about dress code. If we weren’t dressed like we lived in Toronto we could comfortably turn the indoor temperature in office buildings and homes from about 68 degrees to 75-78 degrees. This could save a tremendous amount of energy city-wide, especially during peak periods.

So what other city problems could we solve if we focused on using moral and cultural motivators? Sound off in the comments and start the discussion!