Behavioural Insights Projects

Are there ways to limit the accrual of excessive loan amounts by students? A letter sent to students with student loans who have received a supplementary grant increases the likelihood of them reducing their loan amounts. This increased likelihood translates to an annual average decrease of over € 150 in loan amounts for students receiving both a supplementary grant and a loan. Why this experiment was conducted: award of supplementary grant sometimes has little or no impact on loan…

Institution: Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science

The overall purpose of the study is to facilitate and execute graphic design work and consumer testing regarding the pan-European Personal Pension Product (PEPP) Key Information Document (KID) and Benefit Statement (BS) in three Member States. We will use mix behavioural methods to understand relevant behavioural biases, and why consumers find certain aspects of information related to pension products difficult to understand, and how to overcome those difficulties.

Institution: Open Evidence

Team: Open Evidence

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…

Institution: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

Team: IDB Behavioral Economics Group

Improving prevention in the area of mental health, destigmatizing the topic, improving awareness of the possibilities of help for different types of mental health problems, gradually breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of seeking professional help. Problem: students do not know how to deal with mental discomfort and the onset of mental health problems, including those caused by pandemics.

Institution: Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic

Team: Behavioral and Experimental Economics Team (BEET)

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

Analysis of the preferences of current blood donors and development of a strategy for launching a behavioral blood donor registry.

Institution: Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic

Team: Behavioral and Experimental Economics Team (BEET)

In connection with the 2022 county elections, an experiment was conducted in Finland for the first time to examine the impact of text message reminders on the voting turnout of young people. In the experiment, young people (aged 18 to 29) were messaged twice about the schedule of the county elections and their right to vote. The aim of the study was to find out whether a text message reminder increases voting turnout. The experiment was carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and…

Institution: Prime Minister's Office - Finland

Team: Finnish Behavioural Policy Unit

Home Energy Label

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

Team: Behavioural Science Team

We conducted a systematic search for an overview of reviews of scholarly evidence on scale up, and 11 practice interviews with behaviour science researchers and practitioners to identify the factors and activities that influence the scale up of behaviour change interventions, learn about scale up, its challenges, and useful frameworks, identify which behaviour to target with an intervention, assess the feasibility of different intervention ideas, and select a scalable behaviour change…

Institution: Government of Victoria - Department of Premier and Cabinet

Team: Behavioural insights Unit (VicGov BIU)

How does information on the job market affect the expectations and preferences of pupils in pre-vocational education? A large online platform for career development and career counselling provided pupils who were attending pre-vocational colleges with information on the career prospects of professions in which they are interested. This information resulted in pupils revising their expectations, and made them more likely to aim for jobs with better career prospects.

Institution: Behavioural Insights Network (BIN NL)