Introduction
All government campaigns and interventions aim to make a difference and improve the lives of the public. However, because most public policy interventions aim to change behaviour within complex systems, they can frequently lead to “unintended consequences” – outcomes that are neither anticipated nor desired. From the incidental to the significant, these unexpected outcomes can heavily influence the ultimate success or failure of a campaign. It is therefore vital to consider them systematically during the early planning stages.
As one of the five core levers government uses to achieve its aims – alongside legislation, regulation, taxation and public spending – communications play a critical role in behaviour change. Traditionally, planners have used tools like red teaming, systems thinking, and deep audience insight to minimise risks. While effective, these traditional activities do not always analyse potential disruptions at the level of individual human behaviour.
To bridge this gap, Government Communications developed the IN CASE framework.
This framework provides a systematic, behavioural lens to help policymakers and communicators anticipate, understand, and mitigate unintended behavioural responses before an intervention is launched.
The acronym helps planners review an idea against six distinct risk areas:
- I – Intended behaviour: Assessing whether systems and infrastructure can cope if the target audience adopts the behaviour faster or in higher volumes than expected.
- N – Non-target audiences: Identifying how individuals outside the intended demographic might mistakenly react to or misinterpret the messaging.
- C – Compensatory behaviours: Spotting potential loopholes, perverse incentives, or “moral licensing” where people offset a positive behaviour with an undesirable one.
- A – Additional behaviours: Tracking secondary actions triggered to enable the target behaviour, or resulting from changes in an individual’s self-perception.
- S – Signalling: Evaluating the implicit messages an intervention sends about social norms, expectations, or the relationship between the government and the public.
- E – Emotional impact: Anticipating negative emotional responses – such as fear or a perceived threat to freedom (psychological reactance) – that could cause defiance or complete disengagement.
This guide builds on the Government Communications principles of behaviour change (which use the COM-B model for initial campaign design). Within the standard OASIS planning framework, IN CASE is optimised for use during the strategy and ideas stage to robustly stress-test communication approaches while they are still under development. Ultimately, the goal is not to avoid all secondary impacts – as every policy involves trade-offs – but to ensure we anticipate them clearly enough to choose whether to tolerate them or take active steps to mitigate them.
Stress-testing consequences
The framework is a practical tool intended to provide useful prompt questions early in the design and planning process. It can be used on its own when time and resources are tight, or as a structured prompt to guide deeper red-teaming, systems mapping, or research and monitoring activities.
This framework does not replace standard behavioural science practices, such as clearly defining your target behaviours or mapping out existing barriers to change. Instead, it should be applied once your initial interventions have been chosen to systematically assess them for unintended behavioural consequences.
Below are prompting questions for each element, along with hypothetical scenarios to help you evaluate your communication or policy ideas.
Intended behaviours
Even when a campaign successfully drives the desired behaviour change, systems, processes, places, or services may struggle to cope with the sudden shift in demand.
Prompting questions
- Will infrastructure and systems be able to cope if the behaviour change occurs?
- What could happen if more people than expected change their behaviour?
- What could happen if people change their behaviour more quickly or more frequently than expected?
Hypothetical scenarios
- A campaign encouraging alternatives to plastic water bottles inadvertently prompts people to immediately throw away their current plastic bottles rather than reusing them.
- A home insulation upgrade incentive is launched, but the application process is too complex and customer service teams are entirely overwhelmed by the volume of support requests.
Non-target audiences
Because mass communications cannot always be perfectly targeted, individuals outside your core audience will likely encounter your message, which may trigger unintended shifts in their behaviour or attitudes.
Prompting questions
- What might people outside the target audience think or do in response to the intervention?
- Will people accurately recognise whether they are part of the target audience?
- What could happen if people mistakenly believe that an intervention or communication is targeted at them?
Hypothetical scenarios
- A high-profile “myth-busting” campaign announces that vaccines do not cause fertility problems, accidentally introducing the myth to a massive audience that was previously unaware of it, causing fresh worry and confusion.
- A financial incentive is introduced to encourage the installation of solar panels, leading people who already own perfectly functional solar panels to replace them early just to claim the cash.
Compensatory behaviours
An intervention might successfully drive the target behaviour, but cause people to “compensate” by engaging in new, undesirable actions. This often takes the form of moral licensing – where making progress on one goal makes a person feel justified in acting against the broader objective – or the creation of perverse incentives.
Prompting questions
- How might people seek to compensate for the suggested behaviour change?
- What loopholes exist that allow the target behaviour to be fulfilled via secondary actions that completely undermine the core policy objective?
- If an individual or organisation wanted to exploit the intervention for personal gain, how might they do it?
- What perverse incentives might inadvertently be created?
Hypothetical scenarios
- Drivers who take advantage of a financial incentive to buy an electric vehicle feel a sense of “moral licensing” that justifies booking more long-haul flights than they normally would.
- A workplace introduces random drug testing to encourage abstinence, but employees respond by switching from less harmful substances to dangerous drugs that are much harder for a standard test to detect.
Additional behaviours
Target behaviours do not happen in a vacuum; they can trigger entirely separate, secondary actions. These might be practical steps required to physically enable the target behaviour, or they may stem from a shift in the audience’s self-perception as they observe their own changing habits.
Prompting questions
- What other additional behaviours might be triggered by the intended behaviour change?
- What steps must the audience take simply to enable themselves to complete the intended behaviour change?
- What will people assume the intended behaviour has achieved, and what will they do as a result?
- How might people perceive themselves when they engage in this new behaviour, and what other lifestyle changes might that identity shift cause?
Hypothetical scenarios
- A campaign successfully convinces individuals to support their local high street, but because the area has poor public transport links, local car usage spikes to make the shopping trips possible.
- An incentive for gym memberships prompts participants to view themselves as “healthy individuals,” creating a positive spillover effect where they naturally start optimizing their dietary protein intake.
Signalling
Every public intervention sends a powerful implicit signal regarding current societal norms, government expectations, and the nature of the relationship between the state and the citizen. These background signals can easily drown out your literal message.
Prompting questions
- What implicit signals does the campaign or intervention send about the current situation and the messenger?
- What expectations, norms, and attitudes might the public form as a byproduct of this communication?
- What does the tone signal about the relationship between the messenger and the receiver?
Hypothetical scenarios
- An anti-binge drinking advertisement opens with a lively, highly engaging party scene; disengaged viewers walk away with the reinforced impression that heavy drinking is normal, popular, and fun.
- A customer helpline plays a mandatory greeting stating “Abuse of our agents will not be tolerated,” signaling to callers that interactions are typically highly confrontational and causing them to interpret the agent’s tone defensively.
- A university warning states that any student caught under the influence of alcohol will be instantly disciplined, signaling an enforcement role rather than a supportive one, which scares vulnerable students away from seeking addiction support.
Emotional impact
While emotional hooks can be highly effective, triggering intense negative emotions like fear can backfire, causing the audience to completely tune out the message or adopt maladaptive survival tactics. Similarly, if a message threatens an individual’s personal autonomy, it can trigger psychological reactance, driving them to deliberately perform the forbidden behaviour out of defiance.
Prompting questions
- What emotional response might we observe, and what behavioural consequences could this cause?
- If people experience negative emotions, will it genuinely help or actively hinder the target behaviour change?
- How will individuals who already hold strongly positive or negative attitudes toward this topic respond emotionally?
- Could the directive nature of the intervention cause psychological reactance by appearing to restrict personal freedoms?
Hypothetical scenarios
- A TV campaign to increase cervical cancer screening uses graphic, terrifying statistics; instead of booking appointments, viewers experience severe fear, causing them to mute the advert or actively avoid any future campaign materials.
- A local council institutes a total smoking ban in public parks; habitual smokers feel persecuted and controlled, causing psychological reactance that actually increases their stubborn intention to keep smoking.
Assessing and ranking your risks
Once you have run your campaign or policy ideas through these prompting questions, evaluate each identified unintended consequence based on two criteria: likelihood of occurrence and severity of impact. This allows you to pinpoint the highest-risk behaviours and build targeted mitigation strategies before launching your campaign.
Worked examples
The following two examples demonstrate how the IN CASE framework can be used in practice, for both a communications campaign and a policy intervention.
Example: Communications campaign
Goal: Reduce carbon emissions by encouraging local travel.
Communication: “Visit your local beach or woodland this summer – avoid travelling to other regions, and make the most of what’s on your doorstep.”
Intended behaviour
- Local beach overcrowding, littering, and pressure on facilities
- If local sites are only accessible by car while more distant attractions are convenient by train, behaviour change may lead to higher emissions
Non-target audiences
- Frustration from those who do not live close to such sites and lack transport options
- Induces additional travel from those who initially planned to not travel at all
Compensatory behaviours
- People travel to farther destinations for their next holidays, having “saved up” their environmental impact
- People feel like they can treat themselves more while on holiday, booking more luxurious accommodation and shifting demand patterns
Additional behaviours
- People discover new local sites and travel to them frequently, increasing emissions
- People feel justified in reducing other pro-environmental behaviours on the basis that they have made sacrifices
Signalling
- Signals that local sites are normally unpopular and that people require persuading to use them
- Signals that many people typically travel to other regions for leisure
- Signals that local travel is an “environmentally conscious” choice and doing so makes you an environmentally-conscious person
Emotional impact
- If the messaging is perceived as too direct, this could cause psychological reactance, lowering people’s intention to stay local
Example: Policy intervention
Goal: Encourage people to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables.
Intervention: Receive a £1 voucher every time you spend £10 on fresh fruit and vegetables in participating supermarkets.
Intended behaviour
- Supermarkets face increased demand for fresh fruit and vegetables and cannot keep shelves stocked
- Demand for fruit and vegetables shifts away from small shops and non-participating supermarkets
- People buy more fruit and vegetables than they can reasonably eat, leading to food waste
- People shift from buying frozen or tinned vegetables to fresh vegetables that are more expensive and spoil more quickly
Non-target audiences
- Those who already buy a lot of fruit and vegetables will be able to claim the reward without changing their behaviour (trade off).
Compensatory behaviours
- People buy unhealthy snacks with the voucher (as £1 can easily be spent on an impulsive checkout purchase)
- People make less healthy choices (for example, buying potatoes to fry as chips) and still be able to claim the reward
Additional behaviours
- People travel to the shop multiple times in order to spend the voucher
- People buy large amounts of fruit and vegetables and sell these on to others, in order to claim the reward
Signalling
- Signals that people spend around £10 for fresh fruit and vegetables, lowering consumption for those that usually spend more
- Signals that most people do not eat very many fruits and vegetables and thus a reward needs to be offered
- Signals that fruit and vegetables are generally expensive
- Signals that the Government has a goal of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption
Emotional Impact
- Frustration at receiving a voucher rather than a discount applied to the initial purchase
- Feeling that the Government is overstepping by explicitly rewarding this behaviour, leading to resistance
Mitigating undesirable consequences
Identifying potential unintended consequences is only the first step; the true value of the IN CASE framework lies in how you adapt your strategy to address them. Unintended impacts are rarely a reason to scrap a campaign entirely – instead, they highlight exactly where your policy or communications need built-in safeguards.
Use the targeted interventions below to adjust your messaging, shore up delivery channels, or introduce systemic policy guardrails before you launch.
Intended behaviours
- Check the capacity and performance of systems and processes that are required to enable the desired behaviour change
- Roll out interventions or campaigns gradually
- Establish and communicate clear eligibility criteria for any service or incentive
Non-target audiences
- Target campaigns or interventions as precisely as possible to your target audience
- Use channels that are likely to reach your target audience, and messages that will resonate with them
- Adjust campaign messaging
Compensatory behaviours
- Introduce rules, incentives or guidance that disallow or discourage specific compensatory behaviours
- Ensure that safeguards against abuse of a policy are in place and communicated
Additional behaviours
- Introduce rules, incentives or guidance that disallow or discourage specific additional behaviours
- Use guidance or communications to help people carry out any behaviours required to enable the target behaviour
Signalling
- Target campaigns or interventions as precisely as possible to your target audience
- Use a consistent tone, narrative and voice across communications
- Be transparent with the audience about your motives
Emotional impact
- Make sure that any communication about a risk or threat is accompanied by clear and empowering instructions on how people should behave to avert it
- Enable people to take action both straight away and at a later date, according to emotional needs
- Signpost people to further emotional and practical support where needed
Further guidance and support
The IN CASE framework offers policymakers and communicators a straightforward, behavioural approach to anticipating the unintended consequences of interventions and campaigns. We hope this guide helps you develop behaviour change initiatives that achieve their core objectives while maximising positive public impact.
This guide was developed by the Government Communication Service Behavioural Science Team, who provide expert, end-to-end support for central government campaigns and offer behavioural consultancy services across government. They partner with your department to help move broad behavioural theory into highly targeted, practical solutions.
The team can help you:
- Deconstruct complex problems: Break policy challenges down into their constituent parts to map target behaviours and isolate specific barriers across different demographic groups.
- Decode audience drivers: Analyse the environmental and situational pressures influencing your audience, recognising that seemingly “irrational” behaviour is often a perfectly logical response to stress, ambiguity, or uncertainty.
- Design actionable communications: Design clear information structures and choice architectures that empower citizens to make decisions and take action.
- Deliver bespoke solutions: The team goes beyond standard academic literature to analyse your specific context and develop tailored, contextual recommendations that systematically overcome psychological barriers.
Whether you are brainstorming an initial policy lever, stress-testing an upcoming campaign, or looking for further guidance, our Behavioural Science Team can help build behavioural safeguards into your project. If you have used the IN CASE framework, we would also love to hear about your experience and feedback. For questions, suggestions or consultancy inquiries contact, behavioural-science@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Acknowledgements
This guide was written by Abigail Emery, Dr Laura de Molière, Dr Paulina Lang, Dr Moira Nicolson, and Eleanor Prince. The authors thank colleagues across government and academia for providing their comments and suggestions.
Further reading
- Bem, D. J. (1972) “Self-perception theory” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Academic Press.
- Brehm, J. W. (1966) “A theory of psychological reactance”. Academic Press.
- Government Communications (2021) Principles of behaviour change
- Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., and Monin, B. (2010) “Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
- Ministry of Defence (2010) Red teaming: a guide to the use of this decision making tool in defence, GOV.UK.
- Rogers, R. W., and Prentice-Dunn, S. (1997) “Protection motivation theory” in D. S. Gochman, Handbook of Health behaviour Research, Plenum Press.
- Toma M, Dreischulte T, Gray NM, et al (2018) “Balancing measures or a balanced accounting of improvement impact: A qualitative analysis of individual and focus group interviews with improvement experts in Scotland” BMJ Quality and Safety.