Fun Theory
By Kevin
I guess I'm a little slow but Volkswagen had this really interesting initiative last year called 'The Fun Theory'. They did quite a couple of interesting things to change the behaviours of people by injecting fun into mundane activities. The idea probably stemmed from schools where fun element in injected into teaching and learning to make uptake of new information more comfortable for the kids and less boring. Yet even as we grow up, the desire for fun haven't quite diminished as much as our capacity for it.
The winning entry for their contest, which features a 'Speed Camera Lottery' appears pretty brilliant. The implication though, is that the rewards to abiding by the speed limit from the lottery is proportional (somewhat) to the number of those not abiding by it. Therefore, people's desire to win the lottery would only serve to drive down their rewards. An equilibrium will emerge at the point where there is sort of a market price for traveling slightly above the speed limit where some people won't mind paying and fine and care nothing about the lottery while others would be keen to earn the meagre sum that has been collected from that 'some people'.
Of course, to know what'll happen, you'd really have to test it out.