Professor Benjamin Van Rooij on Questioning Compliance

The Human Risk Podcast

What makes us more or less likely to comply with rules or laws? My guest, Benjamin Van Rooij, knows all about this subject.
He is a Professor of Law and Society at the University of Amsterdam who researches and writes about behavioural law; in other words, the impact laws have on human behaviour and the behavioural science behind law. This is Benjamin’s fifth appearance on the show, which tells you that he’s incredibly engaging and insightful.
I invited Benjamin to come back onto the show to discuss his latest research project on the ‘Obligation to Obey’; the question of whether we feel obliged to comply with Rules or the Law, simply because they are Rules or the Law.
We did talk about that and some of his other research. But we also got into a much wider conversation about Compliance — what it’s there to do and the behavioural drivers behind it — and fascinatingly, some insights into Benjamin’s own propensity to comply, what drives his intellectual curiosity and his observations about Compliance In The Wild.
In our discussion, we explored:

• The Roots and Evolution of Compliance;
  
• Why it can be hard to prove the effectiveness of Compliance programs;
  
• The difference between Reactive vs. Preventive Compliance;
  
• How Compliance Functions are evolving;
  
• Why Behavioural Science, Testing and Experimentation are important in meeting Compliance objectives;
  
• How and Why Social Norms can drive Compliance:
  
• How curiosity and challenge can benefit Compliance;

And much, much more.
Resources
To find out more about Benjamin and his research, visit his faculty page.
You can listen to the previous episodes of the show in which we discussed:
To hear his four previous appearances on the show:

COVID Compliance
The Behavioral Code which explores the book of the same name, which he co-authored with Dr Adam Fine.
Compliance 2.0
Measuring Compliance, where we discussed the book of the same name that he co-authored with Professor Melissa Rorie.