Behavioural Insights Projects

This behavioural experiment with farmers assessed the effect of two policy features of the new green architecture of the EU common agricultural policy on the adoption of environmentally friendly practices: (1) increasing mandatory adoption and (2) shifting budget to voluntary schemes, by decreasing direct payments.

Institution: European Commission

Team: JRC Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights

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)

The problem Missed appointments are a significant cost to the health care system, and patients who do not attend appointments miss out on valuable care. What we did We partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services and several health services to improve patient communications as part of a new Communications Toolkit for health services. To understand what works, we designed a range of behaviourally-informed SMS reminders and letters to reduce the number of patients who do not attend…

Institution: Victoria State Government

Team: Behavioural insights Unit (VicGov BIU)

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

Institution: Ideas42

Team: Ideas42

In 2023 the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) partnered with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to expand on a 2020 survey undertaken by CSIRO that explored Australian attitudes to specific elements of the energy transition (with an emphasis on solar farms). For example, the perceptions of risks and benefits. This project has now expanded to further examine Australians’ acceptance (commonly referred to as ‘social…

Institution: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Team: Behavioural Science Unit

Home Energy label

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

Team: Behavioral Sciences Team

The 'Doe meer met taal' (Get more out of language) campaign was launched to reach out to individuals with limited literacy skills whose mother tongue is Dutch. At its conclusion, people in the target group said they felt more motivated to improve their language skills. They are also more inclined to take proactive steps, for example by engaging in language-related activities at home. 66,000 people visited the campaign website. Why this experiment was conducted: everyone should be equipped with…

Institution: Netherlands Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science

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…

Institution: NYC Mayorship

Team: The NYC Behavioral Design Team - ideas42

How to increase diversity in the police is an unanswered question that has received significant political and media attention. One area of intervention is the recruitment process itself. This study reports the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in a police force that was experiencing a disproportionate drop in minority applicants during one particular test. Drawing on insights from the literatures on stereotype threat, belonging uncertainty and values affirmation exercises, we…

Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Team: The People Lab

Soiled waste disposal areas in municipal public housing buildings are not only a major nuisance for residents, but also cause high cleaning costs. The aim of the present study was to develop behavioral measures to promote cleanliness and to test them in a field experiment with about 400 waste disposal areas. The present paper compares two System-1 (large posters displaying watching eyes and a natural landscape) and two System-2 (financial information, information on normative behavior and…

Institution: Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS)

Team: Insight Austria