Culture change

Culture change is a term used in public policy making that emphasises the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behaviour. It places stress on the social and cultural capital determinants of decision making and the manner in which these interact with other factors like the availability of information or the financial incentives facing individuals to drive behaviour.

These cultural capital influences include the role of parenting, families and close associates; organisations such as schools and workplaces; communities and neighbourhoods; and wider social influences such as the media. It is argued that this cultural capital manifests into specific values, attitudes or social norms which in turn guide the behavioural intentions that individuals adopt in regard to particular decisions or courses of action. These behavioural intentions interact with other factors driving behaviour such as financial incentives, regulation and legislation, or levels of information, to drive actual behaviour and ultimately feed back into underlying cultural capital.

The term is used by Knott et al. of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in the publication: Achieving Culture Change: A Policy Framework[1] (Knott et al., 2008). The paper sets out how public policy can achieve social and cultural change through 'downstream' interventions including fiscal incentives, legislation, regulation and information provision and also 'upstream' interventions such as parenting, peer and mentoring programmes, or development of social and community networks.

The key concepts the paper is based on include:

Knott et al. use examples from a range of policy areas to demonstrate how the culture change framework can be applied to policymaking. For example:

See also

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