5.3 COM-B Behavioral Change
Analyses why people behave as they do through capability, opportunity, and motivation. Launch on platform.
What is it?
The COM-B model (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation → Behaviour) is a practical framework developed by psychologists Susan Michie, Lou Atkins, and Robert West. It helps you understand human behaviour systematically by identifying key factors that enable or prevent actions. COM-B is especially valuable for designing effective interventions and strategies for behaviour change.
Why is it useful?
Applying the COM-B model helps you to:
Clarify behaviour: Identify precisely which elements influence whether someone performs (or doesn’t perform) a behaviour. Design effective interventions: Target your strategies precisely at the specific barriers or enablers of behaviour. Enhance outcomes: Create conditions where desired behaviours become easy, natural, and rewarding. Measure impact clearly: Evaluate and adapt your strategies by tracking specific elements of capability, opportunity, and motivation.
How does it work?
COM-B identifies three core elements, each influencing behaviour in critical ways:
Capability
Characteristics: A person’s physical or psychological ability to perform a behaviour.
Approach: Improve skills, knowledge, physical strength, or mental capacity to enable behaviour.
Example: Training employees on new software (psychological capability), or providing fitness programs to improve physical stamina (physical capability).
Opportunity
Characteristics: External factors in the physical and social environment that make behaviour possible or easier.
Approach: Adjust or redesign environments, social norms, or physical spaces to facilitate behaviour.
Example: Making recycling bins easily accessible (physical opportunity), creating workplace cultures that support mental health (social opportunity).
Motivation
Characteristics: Internal processes (emotional and cognitive) that drive behaviour, including conscious decision-making and automatic habits.
Approach: Influence emotions, beliefs, values, incentives, or automatic routines to increase desire or willingness to act.
Example: Offering financial incentives for energy-efficient choices (reflective motivation), using habit reminders or nudges for healthy eating (automatic motivation).
How COM-B Drives Behaviour Change
COM-B posits a direct relationship: to change any behaviour effectively, you must address at least one of these elements (Capability, Opportunity, or Motivation). Often, interventions that combine elements from two or more components produce the most significant and lasting impacts.
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