The TIPPME intervention typology for changing environments to change behaviour

Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’, there is increasing research and policy attention on altering aspects of the small-scale physical environment, such as portion sizes or the placement of products, to change health-related behaviour at the population level. There is, however, a lack of clarity in characterizing these interventions and no reliable framework incorporating standardized definitions. This hampers both the synthesis of cumulative evidence about intervention effects, and the identification of intervention opportunities. To address this, a new tool, TIPPME (typology of interventions in proximal physical micro-environments), has been developed and here applied to the selection, purchase and consumption of food, alcohol and tobacco. This provides a framework to reliably classify and describe, and enable more systematic design, reporting and analysis of, an important class of interventions. In doing so, it makes a distinct contribution to collective efforts to build the cumulative evidence base for effective ways of changing behaviour across populations.