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  • Report
  • 29th Jun 2021

Designing a One-Stop Shop on Child Online Safety for businesses

Key findings

  • What online resources do businesses want from #gov? Forget fancy video content and start with signposting and plain English advice pages. Read more about our project.
  • Businesses want a service that brings together existing content on child #onlinesafety, through signposting, practical advice pages and in-depth guides. We worked with the UK government to develop and test 2 web prototypes. 💻

How and where do businesses search for information on government regulation? What forms of information are most helpful for businesses and what barriers prevent businesses from enacting guidance?

As children spend an increasing amount of their lives online, we need to ensure that businesses are doing all they can to respect children’s privacy and protect children against risks from harmful interactions, abuse and exploitation. A crucial step in this process is ensuring that businesses – especially small businesses – can easily find, navigate and understand information about regulation and best practice.

In a 12-month research project for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, we conducted a survey, interviews, workshops and a literature review to explore the behavioural barriers that currently prevent businesses from accessing online information about their child online safety responsibilities. Businesses report the need for a single, comprehensive and jargon-free GOV.UK site that signposts to all key resources and provides simple lists of “must do” actions.

We built two prototype websites that were designed to address the barriers identified in our exploratory research and drew on a range of behavioural techniques to drive engagement. Using an online experiment, we found that engagement with either of these prototypes increased people’s understanding of key content by at least 10 percentage points relative to baseline knowledge among the general public. We also found high levels of trust and confidence in the information provided. This is promising evidence that a One-Stop Shop built with our ideas in mind will be a useful resource to help businesses understand their responsibilities and, in turn, protect children from harm.

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Authors

Chris Wright

Advisor

Filip Murar

Senior Research Advisor

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Jordan Whitwell-Mak

The Behavioural Insights Team

For more information