Behavioural Insights Projects

Could we expect a higher vaccine uptake if vaccination appointments are no longer necessary? A campaign in neighbourhoods where vaccination rates were lagging sought to test whether emphasising convenience led to an increase in the number of administered vaccinations, by offering walk-in vaccination without an appointment. This indeed proved to be the case. Furthermore, getting a COVID-19 vaccine on a walk-in basis has become popular, along with the platform PrikkenZonderAfspraak. Why this…

Institution: National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM)

The COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and other social and global political crises and incidents have increased the need to understand the mental resilience, preparedness, agency and sense of community of Finns in various crises and disruptions. This memorandum presents information related to these topics collected via the Citizens’ Pulse survey and citizen interviews commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office in March and April 2022.

Institution: Prime Minister's Office - Finland

Team: Finnish Behavioural Policy Unit

An online experiment with EU consumers was run to assess the relative effectiveness of three sustainability labelling approaches: (1) positive labels - only identifying products with the best sustainability performance, (2) negative labels - only identifying products with the worst sustainability performance, and (3) graded labels - conveying the relative sustainability of all products. Results suggest that graded labels are the most effective to steer consumer toward more sustainable purchase…

Institution: European Commission

Team: JRC Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights

How to increase diversity in the police is an unanswered question that has received significant political and media attention. One area of intervention is the recruitment process itself. This study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in a police force that was experiencing a disproportionate drop in minority applicants during one particular test. Drawing on insights from the literatures on stereotype threat, belonging uncertainty and values affirmation exercises, we…

Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Team: The People Lab

Regulators require lenders to display a subset of credit card features in summary tables before customers finalize a credit card choice. Some jurisdictions require some features to be displayed more prominently than others to help ensure that consumers are made aware of them. This approach could lead to untoward effects on choice, such that relevant but nonprominent product features do not factor in as significantly. To test this possibility, we instructed a random sample of 1615 adults to…

Institution: Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR)

Team: Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR)

The problem Missed appointments are a significant cost to the health care system, and patients who do not attend appointments miss out on valuable care. What we did We partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services and several health services to improve patient communications as part of a new Communications Toolkit for health services. To understand what works, we designed a range of behaviourally-informed SMS reminders and letters to reduce the number of patients who do not attend…

Institution: Victoria State Government

Team: Behavioural insights Unit (VicGov BIU)

The Program of Applied Research on Climate Action in Canada (PARCA Canada) combines behavioural science (BeSci) insights and methods with robust policy analysis to promote climate action. One of the main areas of focus involves collecting data on emerging topics related to the promotion of climate action in Canada (e.g., transportation, energy use, waste management, etc.) using a large and nationally representative sample of Canadians. The current project is the second wave of a repeated…

Institution: Impact and Innovation Hub (IIU)- Impact Canada

Team: Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU)

To support building the pipeline of skilled workers in Ontario, the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD) introduced the Skilled Trades Strategy (STS) in 2020 which aims to modernize the skilled trades and apprenticeship system by breaking the stigma and attracting more young people to the skilled trades, simplifying the system, and encouraging employer participation. In collaboration with MLITSD, the Ontario Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) plans to run a…

Institution: Ontario Public Service (OPS)

Team: Behavioural Insights Unit

Not all UWV clients who receive unemployment benefit post their CVs on werk.nl. This prevents them from being found or matched for a job. Would it help to send them a reminder to their personal Work Folder as well as a text message? Yes it would: this experiment shows that five times more clients are then prompted to put their CV online, compared to clients who are not sent a reminder. Why this experiment was conducted: missing CVs 25% of jobseekers on unemployment benefit who are asked to post…

Institution: Netherlands Employee Insurance Agency (UWV)

We all know that if a 13-year-old has his mind set on something, it is quite difficult to try to change it. This is exactly the type of challenge that the Ministry of Education in Peru is approaching with students in public schools and high schools, targeting those from low-income households in particular. Teenagers often have pre-conceived ideas about their own intelligence, which influences how they react to academic challenges. If a student thinks he is not smart enough, he believes there is…

Institution: World Bank

Team: eMBeD, Mind Behaviour and Development team