Research from the Henley Business School is being applied to help government departments in the UK to communicate more effectively and more efficiently.
Whether it’s convincing people to do something (for example, to eat more healthy food or to pay their taxes on time) or convincing them to stop doing something (such as quitting smoking), changing individual behaviour is often crucial to delivering government policies. Government communications are also important in influencing business behaviour such as UK companies exporting more or international companies investing more in the UK.
So, when researchers at the University of Reading’s Henley Business School developed a novel way to evaluate communications in terms of their capacity to change user behaviour, it was of great interest to the Government Communication Service (GCS).
An early application of the research was the HMRC who used it with a view to increasing tax compliance and reducing tax avoidance. The ‘Henley Reputation Model’ is a conceptual model based on theoretical research by a team of researcher led by Professor of Reputation and Responsible Leadership, Kevin Money.
Money works closely with the Government Communications Service and is a founding member of its Evaluation Council, which supports the development and implementation of best-practice approaches to planning, delivering and evaluating government communications activity. The Evaluation Council draws upon Henley Research as one of its sources and works with government departments communicate more effectively and more efficiently, informing both domestic and international behaviour-change campaigns across a wide range of policy areas, from education and public health to counter-terrorism and global trade.
Find out more
View the full impact case study on the REF 2021 website: Achieving Positive Policy Outcomes Through Effective Government Communications