单选题 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 frequent-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.
单选题 The word exhortation in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】词汇题
[解析] 第一段第一句话介绍了政府为了鼓励公民行为的通常做法，主要有两种手段，一种是exhortation，一种是罚款。而这两种举措往往都收效甚微，因此西方国家才独具匠心地开展了趣味公民活动，旨在通过褒奖的方式提升公民意识。可见exhortation和fine一样都是负面性、惩戒性的政府行为，因此，可将D选项排除。剩下的几个选项，B和C两个选项不符合常识，政府一般不会因为没有履行公民职责就逮捕和起诉某人，因此正确答案应该选A。exhortation的意思是“规劝”，和persuading类似。
单选题 The Fun Theory helped to encourage safe driving by ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】细节事实题
[解析] 第三段提到了“趣味理论”项目为了鼓励安全驾驶提出的新举措，从正反两方面来鼓励安全驾驶(offering both positive and negative reinforcement to encourage safe driving)。negative指的就是对超速者进行罚款，而positive指的就是将罚款所得的钱以彩票的形式分发给严格遵守限速规定的司机。因此，A和B两个选项都只说明了问题的一个方面，不全面，C选项才是正确答案。D选项也是只涉及了新措施开展过程中的一个小细节，那就是用数字监控系统监控车速。
单选题 Dutch government bases one of their lotteries on postal codes in order to ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】细节事实题
[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。
单选题 Compared with lottery, smallprizes for every good conduct as an incentive to encourage good citizenship may work ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】细节事实题
[解析] 题干中的small prizes for every good conduct的意思是“为每一个表现良好的人发放小额的奖金”。用彩票激励正面行为的方式固然有效，但是不是给每一个表现好的人发放小额奖金的方式更公平，效果也更好呢?作者在第五段中做出了回答。作者在第五段中提到，彩票的力量来自于人们往往夸大自己中奖的几率(Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued)。而如果给每个人发放奖金，这样的方法可能会有负面作用(it could well backfire)。作者给出了一个例子，上文提到对超速的人罚款，将罚款金额转换成彩票给予遵守交通规则的人抽奖机会会激励人们的正面行为，在这个案例中如果将彩票变成小额奖金发给每一个遵守交通规则的人，估计每一个表现良好的司机只能得到25美分，这么点钱在激励良好行为方面能有什么诱惑力呢?因此，在作者看来，给每一个表现良好的人发放小额奖金的办法和彩票相比，在激励公民行为方面效果可能没有那么好。正确答案应该选B。
单选题 Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】推理题
[解析] A选项正确。因为人人都喜欢奖励，不喜欢惩罚，因此利用人类的这种心理设置的趣味公民项目大获成功，因此政府要是能够正确把握人们的心理，往往可以制定出更好的政策。B选项错误。奖励机制在公共管理方面确实能够取得意想不到的效果，但是文中并没有就此宣称奖励机制可以用来全面替代惩罚机制，例如在超速管理方面，文中提到的解决方案就融合了奖励机制和惩罚机制。C选项错误。最后一段中提到的飞行常客类型的奖励项目(即通过积分兑换的方式激励公民行为)是除了彩票奖励项目之外另一种有效地激励公民行为的方法，作者并没有说飞行常客项目是为了克服彩票奖励项目的弱点提出来的。D选项讲的是趣味公民项目可能导致的负面效应，但是文中并没有提到这种效应，属于过度引申。