Abstract Behaviour-change interventions unfold in social systems where people learn from others. We develop a stylised agent-based model to examine how four canonical social learning rules – conformist transmission, informational prestige-biased copying, payoff-biased copying and random copying – shape the impact of a simple seeding intervention. Two arms evolve under identical conditions and learning rules, differing only in initial adoption: both start with exactly 5% baseline adopters and the treatment arm additionally seeds 20% of the remaining non-adopters, yielding an exact 25% vs 5% contrast at t equals 0 $t = 0$ t = 0 . Across homogeneous populations, 70/30 mixed ecologies and sweeps over the share of payoff-biased learners, we track adoption trajectories and treatment–control lift; we also vary payoff parameters, prestige informativeness and conformist thresholds in robustness analyses. We find that the same seeding intervention can stall, drift or cascade depending on the learning ecology. In the baseline specification, conformist dynamics exhibit threshold effects that erase treatment gains, prestige-biased and random copying can preserve positive final lift when diffusion remains incomplete and payoff-biased copying mainly changes the diffusion regime rather than preserving large end-point gaps. Robustness checks show that negative payoff premia suppress diffusion, weak or noisy payoff signals can generate treatment advantages, prestige effects depend on how informative prestige is and conformist treatment effects are concentrated in narrow threshold-boundary regions. These results motivate policy heuristics that evaluate interventions relative to local diffusion potential, make successful outcomes visible when payoff cues matter and tailor seeding to the prevailing mix of learning rules.
Recent developments in behavioural public policy emphasise the potential of transparent nudging interventions, such as nudge+ or boosts, to engage people with their decisions. However, the current state of research on transparent nudging is fraught with methodological critiques, and only a handful of studies examine differences between types of transparency messages or 'disclosures'. Using a vignette survey experiment (n = 1916), we measure the influence of transparency, operationalised through different types of disclosures, on both the effectiveness of the nudging technique and the perceived autonomy of those subjected to the nudge. We employ a salience nudge to promote sustainable food choices and present four different disclosures. Results indicate that, while the nudge proved effective in promoting sustainable food choices, the disclosures neither enhanced nor reduced its effectiveness. At the same time, the nudge led to a small but significant decrease in perceived autonomy, which the disclosures did not offset. Overall, differences between the types of disclosures were not substantial enough to yield significant effects in either behavioural outcomes or perceived autonomy. These findings suggest that while disclosures can be applied to increase transparency without compromising nudge effectiveness, they are not sufficient to mitigate concerns about autonomy in nudging interventions.
This study investigates how behavioral interventions affect prosocial decision-making in dictator and trust games, examining immediate and persistent effects. We conducted a two-round experiment with five treatments (defaults, sanctions, social norms, anchoring, moral persuasion) vs control, separated by an unrelated task to measure persistence. We explored how self-efficacy and gender moderate treatment effectiveness. Sanctions were initially most effective for increasing prosocial behavior across both games. When interventions were removed in round two, sanctions continued influencing trust game participants but showed gender-specific patterns in the dictator game, with effects observed only among women. Social norms affected only women across both rounds, significantly in the Trust Game and marginally in the Dictator Game. Additionally, we found self-efficacy and moral persuasion interactions among women only: higher self-efficacy increased giving in the dictator game but decreased giving in the trust game, with effects persisting into round two. No significant relationships emerged for men. Our findings demonstrate important policy implications. While sanctions effectively promote immediate prosocial behavior, interventions affect demographic groups differently. Understanding these differential impacts is crucial for policymakers evaluating behavioral intervention outcomes, suggesting that effective regulatory design must account for individual characteristics rather than assuming universal responses across populations.
Despite the growing application of behavioural science in public policy, progress in many countries has been slow. This study explores the challenges in applying behavioural insights (BI) to policymaking and identifies potential solutions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 behavioural science experts who have worked with national governments or international bodies across 39 countries. Using inductive content analysis, we discovered three main challenges perceived by the experts: limited knowledge and misunderstandings of BI among stakeholders, constraints within the public policy environment, and resource limitations in both BI units and public administrations. The experts also highlighted strategies to build capacity within the public sector, including creating peer networks, partnering with external experts, organising targeted training programmes, and providing supportive tools and resources. We interpret these findings through the lens of navigating complex adaptive systems, distinguishing between ordered problems - amenable to transferable solutions - and genuinely complex problems requiring participatory approaches and contextual adaptation. Advancing contextual understanding of behavioural science in policy may require distinguishing challenges that permit efficient solutions from those demanding slower, relationship-based sense-making.
Diverse information is key for informed and effective policymaking when addressing complex policy issues. Policymakers need to decide what information to process given their limited time and cognitive capacity. This paper presents an online vignette experiment in which 157 civil servants from a Dutch medium-sized municipality participated. We test how civil servants respond to the presence of a social nudge that stimulates more diverse information selection under conditions of low and high complexity. The results show that the effect of a social nudge on information selection is larger in a context characterized by high complexity than by low complexity. This study contributes to understanding how civil servants select information. Moreover, it shows how social nudges can improve the information selection process and provides actionable advice to governmental organizations seeking to improve the information selection process.
The LSE Behavioural Public Policy Knowledge Exchange Group (hereafter the Group) was formed to bring together behavioural specialists across the public and private sectors, the international agencies and academia. The purpose of the Group was for its members to discuss the role that behavioural science ought to play in informing decisions that affect individuals and society. The hope was that, by having a Group of the various stakeholders in behavioural public policy meet regularly over an extended period, a shared understanding of the appropriate objectives of this subfield of public policy might be agreed upon. At the very first meeting of the Group, an attempt was thus made to identify some behavioural public policy principles that all members of the Group could accept. At that meeting, there was common consensus in supporting the use of behavioural public policy to strengthen individual agency in the decisions that people take that affect their own lives, to target externality concerns, and to protect and nurture the social instincts.
Missed hospital appointments (Do Not Attend [DNAs]) undermine healthcare efficiency and access. A high-profile study found that adding descriptive social norms (DSNs) or specific institutional cost (SIC) messages to SMS reminders could substantially reduce DNAs. This prompts optimism that integrating behavioural insights, besides reminders themselves, offers a cost-effective approach to mitigate DNAs. However, subsequent similar interventions have reported heterogeneous findings, echoing broader debates on recent meta-analyses about how to evaluate such findings. We address this issue by framing Behavioural Insights as Applied Science, which structures validation in three phases inspired by clinical research. We treat the aforementioned study as a Phase 1 proof of concept and conduct a Phase 2 replication under comparable operational conditions in a quasi-experimental, time-blocked field trial at South-western Jutland Hospital (20,867 appointments) across Cardiology, Endocrinology and Pulmonology. Patients received SMS reminders rotating every 2 months between a standard message, DSN framing or SIC framing. Neither DSN nor SIC reduced DNAs overall. SIC increased cancellations (OR = 1.41, p < 0.001) but not DNAs; DSN reduced DNAs in Cardiology (OR = 0.76, p = 0.027), while SIC increased DNAs in Endocrinology (OR = 1.31, p = 0.021). Our findings underscore the importance of applying a systematic approach in the evaluation of Behavioural Insights.
Low insurance uptake in developing countries poses a strong obstacle to financial resilience and poverty reduction. Although behavioural biases, such as ambiguity aversion, myopia and distrust, are acknowledged as key barriers, their combined effects are not directly observed. Therefore, this study relies on regulatory and administrative proxies linked to these biases. This study goes beyond analysing these proxies separately to explore how they co-occur in shaping insurance outcomes. Using a novel crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) on a sample of 40 developing countries across Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and the Americas, we identify multiple, equifinal configurations of regulatory and institutional conditions associated with higher insurance uptake. Our necessity analysis reveals that transparent pricing is central to regulatory environments associated with insurance uptake. In addition, product suitability and design standards, as well as deposit insurance coverage, are sufficient regulatory requirements when combined. The csQCA results show that no condition works in isolation; outcomes are associated with specific combinations of regulatory and institutional conditions. The findings indicate that interventions should be interpreted as configurational regulatory packages.
Public policy encourages healthier diets using interventions like financial incentives, calorie labelling or social-norm nudges. While evidence shows these interventions can influence behaviour, effects vary across individuals, indicating a need for tailored approaches. This study explores the effects of tailoring through choice, i.e., whether allowing individuals to choose interventions improves effectiveness. In a field experiment, 839 university students chose between healthier and less healthy snacks under three interventions: (i) small financial incentives, (ii) calorie information or (iii) a social-norm nudge (i.e., 60% chose healthily). Half the respondents were randomly assigned an intervention (or no-intervention control), while the rest selected and received their chosen intervention. Among respondents given a choice, 51%, 41% and 8% selected financial incentives, calorie labelling or social norms, respectively. Self-selected interventions (marginally) significantly increased healthy snack choices compared to the no-intervention control, while randomly assigned interventions did not. When accounting for individual characteristics, chosen calorie labelling and social norm nudges significantly increased healthy choices, while financial incentives did not. Allowing respondents to choose their intervention appears effective, while random assignment is not. This positive effect of choice may be driven by selection into calorie labelling and social norms, although respondent characteristics partially explain this effect.
The gambling industry tends to frame gambling harms as a matter of personal responsibility, which is implicit in their messages like 'gamble responsibly' or 'take time to think'. Jurisdictions such as Australia and the UK are replacing industry messages with a range of independently designed ones, like in tobacco warning labels. Counter-industry messages have been proposed to challenge industry narratives, e.g., 'gambling products are designed to be addictive'. Here we tested 10 potential counter-industry messages among UK gamblers (N = 4,094) using a mixed-methods approach. Results showed that the three best-performing messages came from existing counter-industry campaigns. Participants believed the messages and agreed that they were relevant to people experiencing gambling harm. Participants experiencing higher levels of harm tended to see the messages as more personally relevant to them. Free-text analysis showed that 'gambling products are designed to be addictive' received the most positive responses, and also that personal responsibility views were widespread among participants. Messages randomly shown later in the experiment were appraised more positively, suggesting that counter-industry messaging may become more effective when its core message is repeated in multiple ways. Continual design and testing will contribute to the development of best approaches and inform future implementation.
Personal autonomy is increasingly challenged by institutional rules and societal demands. This research examines how institutional restrictions on what people do, when they do it, and how they do it influence their experience of agency. Across two experimental studies, participants indicated their experienced agency in everyday scenarios where institutions determined one or more of these three components. The results indicate that experienced agency is most strongly undermined when institutions decide what goal a person must pursue. The more components were restricted, the lower the experienced agency, revealing a cumulative effect. The second study further tested whether framing the achievement of a goal as an opportunity to experience freedom could buffer against these effects. This manipulation did not attenuate the impact of restrictions, suggesting that immediate control over decision-making plays a more critical role in shaping experience of agency than anticipated future freedoms. These findings offer insight into how institutional rules shape people's experience of agency and may help guide the design of policies that better respect and preserve personal autonomy.
The UK has recently introduced regulations to prevent design features of online gambling products that may 'encourage problem gambling behaviour'. One change has been to prohibit win-associated and celebratory audiovisual effects following monetary losses in online slots, intended to disable a misleading design feature known as 'losses disguised as wins' (LDWs). We assessed 26 popular online slots available to UK consumers. Contrary to regulatory guidance, 17 used win-associated sounds following LDWs, and 18 used sound effects following LDWs that we judged as 'celebratory'. To independently validate our appraisal of these sound effects, we asked 400 UK-based gamblers to assess whether a selection of sound effects recorded from commercially available online slots communicated a positive outcome. In every case, the average consumer classifications of the recorded sounds were consistent with our own, validating our initial assessments. These results suggest that the misuse of celebratory sound effects in online slots still occurs in the UK market, despite this regulation. We argue that this is in part due to ambiguities in regulatory guidance that have enabled operators to technically comply with the regulation while circumventing its intended effect. We conclude by offering suggestions to amend and improve this regulation.
Drawing on the example of a novel flat-fare public transport ticket, this study explores the potential of behavioral insights to contribute to the success of traditional policy instruments. The ticket is evaluated using the EAST framework to identify attributes that are aligned with recommendations from behavioral science. The impact of these attributes on the decision to use the ticket is analyzed with a representative survey of German citizens. The results highlight the importance of nonmonetary attributes for using the ticket, especially those that are associated with simplicity and flexibility. These behaviorally aligned attributes are found to be particularly important for new subscribers and to differ in relevance for respondents of different income groups. Notably, a 'flat-rate bias' is indicated by a discrepancy between the stated importance of relevant attributes and stated usage. The study underscores the necessity for policymakers to integrate behavioral insights into the design of public transport policies.
This study examines whether behaviourally informed training can improve the effectiveness of phone-based tax debt collection in a public-sector setting. In collaboration with the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency, we implemented a two-day training programme for call centre agents focused on persuasion, negotiation and behavioural influence techniques derived from behavioural science and nudge theory. The impact of the intervention is assessed using descriptive comparisons of monthly aggregated debt-collection performance indicators before and after the training. We find that, following the intervention, trained agents achieved markedly better outcomes relative to pre-intervention periods, including an increase of approximately 20% in the total amount of debt collected over the subsequent three months and a higher rate of secured payment agreements. Notably, these improvements contrast with historical seasonal patterns that typically show a decline in collections during the same period. While the analysis is descriptive and does not permit definitive causal inference, the results provide strong indicative evidence that targeted behavioural training can enhance compliance outcomes in live, interpersonal interactions. The study contributes to the behavioural public policy and persuasion literatures by extending behavioural insights beyond written or digital nudges to real-time, conversational settings. From a practical perspective, the findings highlight the potential value of soft-skills and behavioural training for frontline public servants as a scalable and cost-effective tool for improving tax administration performance.
Public support is crucial for the success of policy interventions that aim to change behaviour. While communicating evidence of policy effectiveness can increase support, it remains unclear which type of evidence is most effective. Statistical evidence is often seen as objective and persuasive, yet personal anecdotes can strongly influence beliefs. We examined how statistical and anecdotal evidence affect policy perceptions. In three online experiments with representative UK samples (N = 901), we showed participants different types of evidence (statistical, anecdotal, or both) that argued for or against six policies, such as meat taxes (climate change), banning e-cigarettes (public health), and 20 mph speed limits (community safety). We measured policy support and perceived effectiveness before and after exposure and explored participants’ reasoning through open-text responses. Results showed that positive statistical and anecdotal evidence did not significantly increase perceived policy effectiveness or support, even when combined. However, negative anecdotes significantly reduced both, though this effect was sometimes mitigated when paired with statistical evidence. Qualitative results found that participants have broader concerns beyond policy effectiveness, such as fairness. Our findings suggest that communicating evidence on policy effectiveness alone may not increase support, as it does not address broader public concerns.
Honest behavior of public sector workers is an important quality of governance, impacting the functioning of government institutions, the level of corruption, economic development and public trust. Scholars often assume that honesty is inherent to public sector culture, however empirical evidence on the causal effect of public sector culture on honest behavior is lacking. This research addresses this question by estimating the causal effect of priming public sector identity on the honest behavior of public employees. We validated an instrument for priming public sector identity, and employed it in five preregistered incentivized experiments among civil servants in Germany, Israel, Italy, Sweden and the UK (N=2,827). We find no evidence for the effect of public sector culture on honest behavior in both individual (four studies) and collaborative (one study) tasks. The theoretical implications of these results for the study of moral behavior in the public sector are discussed.
The purpose of this paper is to first review William James's explicit positions on paternalism in the context of medical licensure and the annexation of the Philippines. Then I wish to show that these positions, as well as a more generalized antipaternalist stance, are the implications of James's philosophy and psychology and not simply his ‘personal’ sentiments. The elements of James's thought are arranged in such a way as to facilitate a comparison with contemporary behavioral (heuristics and biases) paternalism. The conclusion is that James has arguments against behavioral paternalism avant la lettre that are still useful and deserve discussion.
Dark patterns are user interface design elements which harm users but benefit vendors. These harms have led to growing interest from several stakeholders, including policymakers. We develop a high-level analytical framework – the dark patterns auditing framework (DPAF) – to support policymaker efforts concerning dark patterns. There are growing links between dark patterns and the behavioural science concept of sludge. We examine both literatures, noting several worthwhile similarities and important conceptual differences. Using two ‘sludge audits,’ and the DPAF, we examine 14 large online services to provide a high-level review of the user experience of these services. Our approach allows policymakers to identify areas of the user ‘journey’ ( dark paths ) where sludge/dark patterns persist. For regulators with constrained resources, such an approach more be advantageous when planning more granular analyses. Our approach also reveals several important limitations, notably, within some of the tools for sludge auditing which we develop, such as the ‘equal clicks principle.’ We discuss these limitations and directions for future research.
The effectiveness and uptake of financial incentives can differ substantially between reward- and deposit-based incentives. Therefore, it is unclear to whom and how different incentives should be assigned. In this study, the effect of different modes of assigning reward- and deposit-based financial incentives on effort is explored in a two-session experiment. First, students’ ( n = 228, recruited online) discounting, loss aversion and willingness to pay a deposit were elicited. Second, an incentivized real-effort task was completed ( n = 171, 25% drop-out). Two modes of assigning reward- or deposit-based financial incentives were compared: random assignment and ‘nudged’ assignment – assignment based on respondent characteristics allowing opting out. Our results show that respondents receiving nudged assignment earned more and persisted longer on the real-effort task than respondents randomly assigned to incentives. We find no differences in effectiveness between reward-based or deposit-based incentives. Overall, 39% of respondents in the nudged assignment mode followed-up the advice to take deposit-based incentives. The effect of deposit-based incentives was larger for the respondents who followed-up the advice than for respondents that randomly received deposit-based incentives. Overall, these findings suggest that nudged assignment may increase incentives’ effect on effort. Future work should extend this approach to other contexts (e.g., behaviour change).
Existing regulation in the UK states that the term ‘milk’ can only be used in labelling to describe products that originate from animals. We conducted an observational study, which surveyed the availability and labelling of milk substitutes in UK supermarkets, and an online experimental study, which assessed the impact of using the term ‘milk’ on milk substitute labelling. In the experimental study, 352 UK adults were randomised to one of the two conditions where they saw milk substitutes that were either labelled with UK regulations (e.g., soya drink) or using the term ‘milk’ (e.g., soya milk). Our primary aims were to assess whether adding the term ‘milk’ to labels would (1) more accurately communicate the uses of milk substitutes or (2) confuse consumers about which products come from an animal source. In our observational study, milk substitutes were readily available and labelling varied significantly. In our experimental study, labelling products with the term ‘milk’ increased understanding of the product's use. However, participants who saw the term ‘milk’ on milk substitute labelling misidentified more milk substitutes as coming from an animal source. Future policy should consider the clarification of such labelling.
