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  3. Governments typically use two tools to encourage citizens to engage in civic behavior like paying their taxes, driving safely or

Governments typically use two tools to encourage citizens to engage in civic behavior like paying their taxes, driving safely or

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问题     Governments typically use two tools to encourage citizens to engage in civic behavior like paying their taxes, driving safely or recycling their garbage: exhortation and fines. These efforts are often ineffective. As every successful parent learns, one way to encourage good behavior, from room-cleaning to tooth-brushing, is to make it fun. Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to adults.
    In this spirit, the Swedish division of Volkswagen has sponsored an initiative they call The Fun Theory. Their first project is to get people to use a set of stairs rather than the escalator that ran alongside it. By transforming the stairs into a piano-style keyboard such that walking on the steps produced notes, they made using the stairs fun, and they found that stair use increased by 66 percent.
    The musical stairs idea is more amusing than practical, so The Fun Theory sponsored a contest to generate other ideas. The winning entry suggested offering both positive and negative reinforcement to encourage safe driving. Specifically, a camera would measure the speed of passing cars. Speeders would be issued fines but some of the fine revenues would be distributed via lottery to drivers who were observed obeying the speed limit. A short test of the idea offered promising results.
    This example illustrates an important behavioral point; many people love lotteries. In using lotteries to motivate it is important to get the details right. Participants are likely to find a lottery more enticing if they find out that they would have won. The Dutch government uses this principle very effectively. One of its state lotteries is based on postal codes. If your postal code is announced as the winner, you know that you would have won had you only bought a ticket. The idea is to play on people’s feelings of regret.
    Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued. Of course you can simply pay people for doing the right thing, but if the payment is small, it could well backfire. (If the total non-speeding-prize money had been divided up evenly among all those who drove within speed limit, I estimate that the price paid would have been about 25 cents per driver. Would anyone bother for that?)
    An alternative to lotteries is a trequent-flyer-type reward program, where the points can be (redeemed for something fun. A free goodie can be a better inducement than cash since it offers that rarest of commodities, a guilt-free pleasure. This sort of reward system has been successfully used in England to encourage recycling. In the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead outside of London, citizens could sign up for a rewards program in which they earned points depending on the weight of the material they recycled. The points were good for discounts at merchants in the area. Recycling increased by 35 percent. The moral here is simple. If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.
Dutch government bases one of their lotteries on postal codes in order to______.
选项 A、make the lottery drawing more fun
B、increases the chances of lottery winning
C、motivate people’s initiative to be involved
D、arouse a sense of regret over misconduct
答案C
解析 文章第四段阐述了彩票在激励人们行为方面的特殊作用。如果彩民发现自己离大奖只差一步之遥，彩票对他们的诱惑就更大，因此在涉及彩票时，可以通过一些小细节增加人们参与的积极性。例如荷兰政府就发行了一款基于邮政编码的国家彩票，因为邮政编码是每个人身份的一种代表，因此这就给人们造成了一种人人都有机会中奖的感觉，从而调动人们参与的积极性。因此荷兰政府的这一设计目的是为了提升人们参与的积极性，[C]选项为正确答案。[A]和[B]两个选项错误，邮政编码的设计并不一定使抽奖过程更有趣，也不一定会提升人们的中奖几率，只是给人们造成一种中奖几率提升的错觉，目的还是提升人们参与的积极性。[D]选项利用原文的feelings of regret这个短语设置干扰选项，原文说的是因为人人都有邮政编码，因此一旦发现自己的邮政编码中奖，却因没有买彩票而损失了一笔奖金，这个时候人们就会追悔莫及。因此荷兰政府的彩票设计也利用了人们追悔莫及的心理。而不是这里所说的regret over misconduct，对“不端行为”的追悔。
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