Implications for Policy-Making and Further Developments

Abstract

A discussion of the overall findings specifically aimed at highlighting the implications for policy-making. We will argue that sense-making processes can play an important role in helping design policies, in mapping and in understanding how people of given social milieus interpret social reality and therefore intend to act or react upon it. In recent years, a more realistic understanding of human behaviour and decision-making has challenged the often-implicit assumptions about people on which policies were often conceived. From the individual rational choice based citizen we moved to a bounded rationality perspective. A further step, outlined by this project, is to take into account the interpretative and cultural nature of human behaviour as a fundamental element to consider at both the policy design and implementation stages. At the descriptive level, revealing the cultural landscape of a community that is the target of a policy intervention ensures an alignment between the normative behaviour contained in the policy and its cultural compatibility and acceptance. At the more transformative level, culture can become the target itself of policies, when cultural change is collectively accepted as necessary.