COM-B Behavioural Framework
The COM-B Model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding why people behave as they do and how to facilitate meaningful behaviour change.
COM-B offers a practical approach that can serve as the foundation for effective interventions across various contexts, and it is a great starting point to plan behaviour change campaigns and activities.
What is COM-B?
COM-B stands for Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, and Behaviour. The model proposes that these three components interact to generate behaviour, and that change in any component can influence whether a behaviour occurs. Each component can be further divided:
Capability refers to an individual's psychological and physical ability to engage in a specific activity:
● Physical capability: The physical strength, skill, or stamina needed to perform a behaviour.
● Psychological capability: The knowledge, cognitive abilities, and mental skills required.
Opportunity encompasses all external factors that make a behaviour possible or prompt it:
● Physical opportunity: What the environment enables through time, resources, locations, and physical cues.
● Social opportunity: The cultural norms, social expectations, and interpersonal influences that shape our actions.
Motivation represents the internal processes that energize and direct behaviour:
● Reflective motivation: Conscious decision-making processes involving plans, evaluations, and beliefs
● Automatic motivation: Emotional responses, habits, impulses, and desires that drive behaviour without conscious thought.
Who created COM-B?
The COM-B Model was developed by Susan Michie, Maartje M van Stralen, and Robert West through their work at University College London's Centre for Behaviour Change.
Published in 2011, the model emerged from a systematic review of 19 existing frameworks of behaviour change.
The researchers sought to create a more unified and practical approach to understanding behaviour that could guide intervention design across multiple contexts.
The model has since become a cornerstone in behaviour change theory and serves as the foundation for the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW), a broader framework that helps practitioners select appropriate intervention functions based on COM-B analysis.
How COM-B works in practice
The power of COM-B lies in its interactive nature. When applying this model to encourage someone to adopt physical activity, for instance, we might address their perceived lack of capabilities by offering training sessions, tackle opportunity barriers by creating accessible exercise spaces, and enhance motivation by framing activity as both necessary and desirable.
The model recognises that behaviour change is rarely linear. Successfully changing behaviour can transform the determinants of behaviour themselves, reinforcing new habits.
By understanding what drives behaviour through the COM-B lens, communications and operational professionals can create more effective messaging and tactics that lead to actual and measurable behaviour change.
Book a Discovery Call Book a Discovery call with Dominic Ridley-Moy to find out exactly how he can help you apply proven strategies to shift behaviours and transform your communications and service delivery. Most importantly, he will help you achieve this without wasting time and budget on communications and interventions that cost a lot and have low impact.
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