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…
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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Legend: Projects status
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BI Project
Website Verbeterjehuis.nl helps homeowners choose the right sustainability measures: which…
This online experiment tested various ways in which sustainability measures for homeowners are presented on the website verbeterjehuis.nl, ‘improve your home’. The variant emphasising that the sustainability measures are 'recommended for your personal situation' proved to be most effective. This addition acts as an incentive to homeowners to install roof insulation or adopt other sustainability measures.
Why this experiment was conducted: verbeterjehuis.nl website optimisation
Homeowners…
The NYC Behavioral Design Team provided an additional reminder to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) clients that they would lose their benefits if they did not complete the SNAP recertification process. Highlighting the consequences and including attention-grabbing icons made this NYC BDT supplemental SNAP recertification notice more salient and actionable for clients.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Text messages were delivered to parents of children from 3 to 5 years old enrolled in public preschools in Uruguay using a government mobile app. These messages targeted malleable factors producing students’ absences and sought to influence parent’s attitudes and beliefs about preschool attendance to increase children’s presence in the classroom.
IMPACT
Children in remote areas increased attendance by 1.5 days, suggesting an increase in cognitive development of 0.20 SD.…
Encouraging a more circular economy to lessen the impacts of climate change will require behavioural changes from Canadians. In partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), we have launched a program of research to help meet some of Canada’s recycling targets—90% collection rate for plastic beverage containers, and these containers to have 50% recycled plastic content by 2030. This research will use insights and approaches from behavioural science to understand and increase…
In partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU) has launched a multi-year program of research on climate change. 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 the launch of a longitudinal survey that will, over time, collect…
BETA partnered with AFSA on two projects to determine how to best communicate about the consequences of bankruptcy.
In the first project, over 6,500 Australians completed one of six educational tools online that explain the consequences of bankruptcy and then assessed their levels of understanding. A pop-quiz and video were most effective, improving people’s understanding by 27 percentage points above the group that saw no educational tool.
In the second project, we introduced five additional…
BI Project
Nudge vs Superbugs: a behavioural economics trial to reduce the overprescribing of antibiotics
BETA and the Department of Health ran a trial to test the impact of personalised letters from Australia's Chief Medical Officer to high-prescribing GPs prompting them to consider reducing antibiotic prescribing where appropriate and safe.
Home Energy Label
BI Project
Electricity Information to Fit the Bill: Redesigning electricity bills to support consumer…
Electricity bills are a key way to inform people about their plan and usage, but bills can be confusing and are not really useful to help people navigate the electricity market. BETA and the Department of the Environment and Energy ran a trial to test the impact of bill design on people’s confidence in their ability to look for a better offer and intention to do so. We drew on behavioural insights to design and test six electricity bills. We focussed on simplifying bill design to draw…