Contact-tracing mobile phone apps have the potential to play a role in controlling
the spread of COVID-19, but their success hinges on widespread uptake by the public. We
report a study that behaviourally pre-tested COVID Tracker, Ireland’s contact-tracing app,
prior to its launch with a large sample of smartphone users. The study was funded by the
Department of Health and run in co-operation with the app’s developers, NearForm.
Participants were randomised to receive different versions of a…
Behavioural Insights Projects
Discover projects applying behavioural science to policy from around the world. Add your own projects, whether completed or still ongoing, to contribute knowledge on BI applications across different countries, policy areas, and topics of interest.
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Tax amnesties, a limited-time opportunity for a specified group of taxpayers to pay a defined amount of tax liabilities, are broadly used across countries because they generate short-term revenue gains. However, evidence suggest that tax amnesties fail to have long-term effects, and in some cases, they generate negative effects on compliance. With the goal of evaluating the impact of tax amnesties, this experiment relies on the behavioral principle of limited attention and redesigns the…
Waste management has become an issue of national concern in Bhutan; recovery and recycling are minimal, whilst landfills are overflowing. To address waste management issues, the Royal Government of Bhutan took up waste management as a flagship program under the 12th Five Year Plan which is being implemented by the National Environment Commission Secretariat (NECS), Royal Government of Bhutan. In support of the program, NECS, Thimphu Thromde (municipality) and the Gross National Happiness…
BI Project
Whāriki Haumaru: Encouraging voluntary participation at court for people with outstanding Warrants…
We seek to increase voluntary appearances for people with outstanding Warrants to Arrest (WTA) through reminder phone calls from Māori Wardens and Police. This Auckland-based project follows a proof-of-concept trial in the Eastern District, in which Māori Wardens made phone calls to people with outstanding WTAs and we compared voluntary appearance rates for those who were reached via phone to those who were not.
While this trial in the Eastern District showed indicative evidence that phone…
Small businesses were sent behaviorally-informed emails encouraging them to apply to the Growth Vouchers program.
A key part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) remit is to provide support to small businesses in the United Kingdom. BIS has explored a number of initiatives to help these businesses grow.
One of these initiatives was ‘Growth Vouchers’ – a program of matched funding with a £30 million budget. Businesses could apply for funding to help subsidize the…
Challenge
Many people in developing nations have limited access to formal savings mechanisms, impeding their ability to save money and invest in agricultural inputs like tools and fertilizer that might help improve their crops. Among the many structural reasons for low savings rates (inaccessible banks, high transaction costs, distrust of financial institutions, lack of financial literacy), psychological barriers such as impatience or lack of self-control may also play a role. Additionally,…
The Government of Canada wants to support the transition from home heating based on fossil fuels (e.g., natural gas) to electric heat pumps. Here, we wanted to test different ways of framing the advantages of heat pumps and assess the benefit of providing a step-by-step guide to getting a heat pump.
Among the education and psychology literature
that looks at the role of beliefs and school outcomes,
Growth Mindset theory (GM) posits that by helping
students shift their theory of learning to one where
intelligence isn’t a fixed state – but rather, that it’s
malleable, and something you can improve and grow
over time – students can become self-motivated to
improve both academic effort and outcomes. Teaching
youth how to foster a GM doesn’t just offer a potential
solution at low cost…
PROJECT SUMMARY
ideas42 and Busara Center for Behavioral Economics worked with a major bank and telecommunications company in Nigeria to send behaviorally-informed SMS messages to customers to increase their use of mobile bank accounts.
IMPACT
Effects varied by message and audience; notably, injunctive norm messages led to a 45 percent increase in the number of clients making deposits among females with active accounts, from 0.82% to 1.81%.
RESULTS
Design
ideas42 and the Busara Center for…
As rewards increasingly become an instrument used by policymakers, it is important to find a reward mechanism that does not crowd out intrinsic motivation, is long lasting, and has positive spillover effects on third parties. A policy innovation introduced by the Municipality of Santa Fe (Argentina) allowed us to evaluate different mechanisms for rewarding tax compliance – participation in a lottery (financial motive), public recognition (moral channel), and provision of a visible and durable…