Behavioural Insights Projects

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, guests were required to wear face masks on entering and while moving inside hospitality venues. To promote this behaviour, self-persuasion and salience techniques were used in this experiment - with notable success. Following the announced relaxation of face mask requirements, there was a decrease in face mask usage, although this was significantly less in hospitality venues that saw interventions than in venues that did not experience interventions. Why this…

The Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) is a government-funded program for all permanent visa holders and some temporary visa holders who have less than a vocational level of English. Not all people who are eligible for the AMEP participate in it. The Department of Home Affairs commissioned BETA to evaluate the effectiveness of communication in participants’ home languages on increasing participation in the AMEP. Trial 1: We will send text messages to speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese,…

Institution: Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC)

Team: Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA)

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)

This study examined how people respond to a new income plan for retirement, known as a Comprehensive Income Product for Retirement (CIPR). A CIPR is a composite retirement income product which is intended to provide a balance of income, risk management (for example, longevity risk management) and flexibility to retirees. In response to a Financial System Inquiry1 recommendation, the Government has agreed to facilitate superannuation trustees pre-selecting a CIPR for their members at retirement.…

Institution: Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC)

Team: Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA)

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…

Institution: Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC)

Team: Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA)

This experiment involved making the information on the WBSO website clearer and more personally relevant to entrepreneurs. The visibility of the call-to-action was also enhanced. The study showed that entrepreneurs were prompted to spend more time exploring the possibilities offered by the Research and Development (Promotion) Act (WBSO) and that they read the information more carefully. Why this experiment was conducted: number of new applications below expectations The Research and Development…

Institution: Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)

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…

Institution: Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC)

Team: Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA)

Air pollution is a serious health and environmental problem in many cities, including Pristina, Kosovo, where poor air quality is a frequent issue. Private cars and taxis are a major mode of transportation in Pristina, contributing significantly to both pollution and congestion, which is most problematic at peak traffic hours when individuals commute to and from work. To tackle this issue, ideas42 partnered with the UNDP Kosovo to design a behavioral intervention with the unifying slogan, "Give…

Institution: Ideas42

Team: Ideas42

To better learn about the U.S. General Services Administration’s USAGov email audience, a bilingual survey was developed to include questions on preferred topics, preferred frequency of email communications, utility of emails, and audience demographics. USAGov sought to learn more about their email audience through the survey and by using behavioral insights to increase survey response.

Institution: General Services Administration (GSA)

Team: Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES)

SERNAC designed and tested Key Fact Sheets to help consumer decision-making on quoting car insurance. The study evaluated options to standardize the car insurance quotation sheet's design through a randomized online experiment with 3,008 consumers. Three prototypes were designed and tested in contrast to a representative quotation sheet currently provided by insurance companies in Chile to achieve this objective. Each prototype considered simplifying the language and standardization of the…

Institution: Servicio Nacional del Consumidor (SERNAC)

Team: Servicio Nacional del Consumidor (SERNAC)