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.

Number of BI projects:
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Legend: Projects status
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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…
Land tax is payable in Queensland on properties valued over a certain threshold. The Queensland Office of State Revenue can approve land tax exemptions for a range of reasons that include landowners’ principal place of residence and business of primary production. Once claimed, the exemption continues to apply indefinitely, which is appropriate as long as landowners are entitled to continue to claim the exemption. However, landowners who claim the exemption are obligated to inform the…
PROJECT SUMMARY
Arizona State University freshmen students eligible for the Student Engagement and Employment Development Plan (SEED), a work-study program, received emails designed to emphasize the benefits of joining the program and eliminate hassles in the application process.
IMPACT
The redesigned emails increased the number of students applying for SEED jobs by 3 percentage points, from 9% to 12% of students.
Source: B-Hub
Parents within the Child Support Program can apply for a Change of Assessment (CoA) when they experience a change in their circumstances that might affect their child support payments or entitlements. This is done by lodging an application with the Department of Human Services (DHS).
The aim of the study is to examine whether providing timely and salient information about the receipt and process of a claim improves process transparency and saves client time and effort by reducing the need for…
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 appearances for those who were reached via phone to those who were not.
While this first trial showed indicative evidence that phone calls may be effective,…
BI Project
Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates: did mobile vaccination units result in an increase in the number…
In an effort to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates, mobile vaccination units were rolled out in late 2021. This strategy proved successful: the number of vaccinations administered was between 1.1 and 14.5 times higher in neighbourhoods on the days they were visited by mobile units. The units were more effective in rural areas than in urban settings. In addition, they proved to be more effective than average in neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of SGP voters and still effective, although to a…
In the study, the effectiveness of four reminder messages was evaluated through an online laboratory experiment involving 2,963 participants. The content of these messages was designed based on evidence from behavioural sciences, and their effect was contrasted with that of a simple, brief, and direct message (control message). The impact of the reminders was measured through four outcome variables: the action participants declared they would take after receiving the message, understanding and…
Hospital-care-associated infections (HCAIs) represent the most frequent adverse event during care delivery, affecting hundreds of millions of patients around the world. Implementing and ensuring conformity to standard precautions, particularly best hand hygiene practices, is regarded as one of the most important and cheapest strategies for preventing HCAIs. The behavioural sciences have documented the potential of adjusting seemingly irrelevant contextual features in order to ‘nudge’ people…
PROJECT SUMMARY
To increase uptake of flu vaccines and maintain a healthy workforce during the 2016-17 flu season, New York City’s Behavioral Design Team (NYC BDT) partnered with WorkWell NYC to design behaviorally informed emails to encourage New York City employees to visit a worksite flu clinic. One version of the redesigned email used the strategy of “enhanced active choice,” whereby employees were prompted to make a choice that had a clear right answer.
IMPACT
Behavioral emails more…
Online experiment tested two novel public health messages on social distancing.
•Messages focused on potential to infect vulnerable people or many people.
•Participants (N = 500) randomized to see control or (one of two) treatment posters.
•Behavioral intentions and acceptability judgements of behaviors measured later.
•Both posters increased caution with respect to social distancing.