10.2. OECD, 2019b PDF

Tools and Ethics for Applied
Behavioural Insights: The

BASIC Toolkit
Identify Analyse Design Test Scale

Behaviours Biases Strategies Interventions for Change
Tools and Ethics
for Applied Behavioural
Insights: The BASIC
Toolkit
This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The
opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official
views of OECD member countries.
This document, as well as any data and any map included herein, are without prejudice
to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international
frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.
Please cite this publication as:

OECD (2019), Tools and Ethics for Applied Behavioural Insights: The BASIC Toolkit, OECD Publishing, Paris,
https://doi.org/10.1787/9ea76a8f-en.
ISBN 978-92-64-93555-6 (print)

ISBN 978-92-64-34794-6 (pdf)
The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of
such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in
the West Bank under the terms of international law.
Photo credits: Cover © PureSolution/Shutterstock.com.
Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/about/publishing/corrigenda.htm.

© OECD 2019
You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and
multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable
acknowledgement of OECD as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should
be submitted to [email protected]. Requests for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be
addressed directly to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) at [email protected] or the Centre français d’exploitation du droit de copie
(CFC) at [email protected].
FOREWORD │3
Foreword
Why do certain polices work, improving people’s lives, while others fail? This question
confronts policy makers and regulators across the world. Some have answered it by
actively using behavioural insights (BI) to understand how individuals and organisations
make decisions.
BI is increasingly used in policy making to improve understanding of how context, biases
and other influences affect the behaviour of people and organisations. The BI approach is
evidence-driven, focussing on understanding what actually drives the decisions of
citizens, rather than relying on assumptions of how they should act. In doing so, it helps
ensure that policies reflect real needs and behaviours for greater impact and effectiveness.
The OECD has been at the forefront of documenting and researching the use of BI in
public policy. In partnership with the community of behavioural policy makers and
practitioners from around the world, the OECD identifies and develops tools, approaches,
knowledge and standards to support the use of BI.
This report responds to a request from the behavioural community for guidance on how to
apply BI more systematically and responsibly. It provides policy makers and practitioners
with a set of tools that can be applied along with other existing behavioural frameworks.
This toolkit guides the policy maker through a methodology that looks at behaviours,
analysis, strategies, interventions and change (abbreviated to “BASIC”).
The BASIC methodology includes a set of ethical guidelines to help policy makers apply
BI responsibly. BI can raise ethical concerns related to collecting data on individual or
group behaviours, as well as using experimental methods to test theories on a small scale
before implementing them more broadly. Issues can arise around privacy, consent and the
ethics of applying certain solutions to only some groups. This toolkit presents both
general principles for the ethical application of BI and a set of guidelines to follow during
each stage of the BASIC process.
Governments face no shortage of challenges. Addressing these challenges often requires a
better understanding of human behaviour. It is our hope that this study will help
governments better understand the potential of using BI as a policy tool.
Marcos Bonturi
Director, OECD Public Governance Directorate
TOOLS AND ETHICS FOR APPLIED BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS: THE BASIC TOOLKIT © OECD 2019
4 │ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements
The OECD developed this toolkit in partnership with Dr. Pelle Guldborg Hansen of
Roskilde University, drawing partly on tools developed by his work with iNudgeyou –
The Applied Behavioural Sciences Group, applying BI worldwide for over a decade. Dr
Hansen prepared the manual, with inputs from Filippo Cavassini and James Drummond.
The introductory guide was prepared by Jun Nakagawa and Francesca Papa, with inputs
from Filippo Cavassini, James Drummond and Faisal Naru.
OECD work on behavioural insights is conducted under the leadership of
Marcos Bonturi, Director, Irène Hors, Deputy Director, and Nick Malyshev, Head of the
Regulatory Policy Division, Public Governance Directorate. Peer review comments to the
overall report were provided by Irène Hors, Deputy Director, and Martin Forst, Head of
the Governance Reviews and Partnership Division, Public Governance Directorate.
Eleonore Morena edited the report and Jennifer Stein co-ordinated the editorial process,
with editorial support provided by Andrea Uhrhammer.
The OECD Secretariat would like to thank Ammaarah Martinus, Rebecca Ross,
Cameron Cyster, and Kathryn Wooldridge, Department of the Premier, Western Cape
Government, for their comments on early drafts of the toolkit. A draft of this toolkit was
discussed at the Western Cape Government-OECD Behavioural Insights Conference in
Cape Town, South Africa, from 27-28 September 2018. The Secretariat would like to
thank Marcia Korsten, Deputy Director General and Anthony Hazell, Chief Director
Policy and Strategy, Department of the Premier, Western Cape Government,
South Africa, as well as all the delegates who attended to the conference and provided
valuable feedback during breakout sessions.
Thanks are extended to the members of the behavioural insights community who
provided detailed feedback and comments during the public consultation stage. Special
thanks go to (in alphabetical order by last name): Muzaffar Abdul Hamid and
Sawiah Abdul Samad, Malaysia Productivity Corporation, Malaysia; Andrew Archer,
Crown Prince Court, United Arab Emirates; Susanne Baltes, Federal Chancellery,
Germany; Brendan Beere, Irish Central Bank, Ireland; Pauline Bertrand and
Frédéric Boehm, Public Sector Integrity Division, OECD; Solveig Bourgeon,
Her Majesty Revenue and Customs, United Kingdom; Emanuele Ciriolo, Foresight and
Behavioural Insights Unit, European Commission; Peter de Smedt, DKB Behavioural
Insights Team, Belgium; Thomas Dirkmaat, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Netherlands;
Rupert Gill, Her Majesty Revenue and Customs, United Kingdom; Catherine Griffin,
Australian Taxation Office, Australia; John Guyton, Internal Revenue Service,
United States; Elizabeth Hardy, Impact and Innovation Unit, Canada; Jackie Hoare,
DEFRA, United Kingdom; Jirina Jilkova, University of Usti; Stefan Kaufman,
Environmental Protection Authority, Victoria Government, Australia; Robert Lepenies,
Humboldt University; Jens Lundgren, Energy Markets Inspectorate, Sweden; Fadi Makki,
Qatar Behavioural Sciences Unit, Qatar; Lindsey Maser, City of Portland, United States;
Herbert Mikulasek, Federal Ministry of Finance, Austria; Marliza Mohamed, Inland
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS │5
Revenue Board, Malaysia; Robert Murphy, Department of Health, Ireland;

Jeroen Nieboer, Financial Conduct Authority, United Kingdom; Kate Phillips,
Department of the Premier, Victoria Government, Australia; Jonathan Porter, Ofcom,
United Kingdom; Henriette Prast, Tillberg University; Karl Purcell, Sustainable Energy
Authority of Ireland; Leonore Riitsalu, University of Tartu; Ingunn Sandaker, Oslo
University; Mariana Sarmiento, Communications Regulation Commission, Colombia;
Dilip Soman, University of Toronto; Zhi Soon, The Behavioural Insights Team;
Glen Steyn, Department of Economic Development and Tourism, Western Cape
Government, South Africa; Marco Tagliabue, Oslo University; Silje Jenny Undahl, Tax
Norway; Rene van Bavel, Joint Research Centre, European Commission; Suzanne van
Melis, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Netherlands; Chiara Varazzani, Behavioural
Economics Team of the Australian Government, Australia; and Alyssa Whalen, Impact
and Innovation Unit, Canada. A special thank you is extended to all others who have
inputted their ideas to the development of this toolkit along the way and are too many to
name.
A draft of the report was discussed at the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee in
November 2018 as well as distributed for final comment in May 2019, with thanks to
delegates for their detailed feedback and comments.
TABLE OF CONTENTS │7
Table of contents
Abbreviations and acronyms .............................................................................................................. 11

Executive summary ............................................................................................................................. 13
Chapter 1. Introductory guide to BASIC .......................................................................................... 15
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 16
Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR ............................................................................................................................ 20
Stage 2: ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................ 23
Stage 3: STRATEGIES ............................................................................................................................ 28
Stage 4: INTERVENTION ....................................................................................................................... 33
Stage 5: CHANGE .................................................................................................................................. 36
Ethical considerations............................................................................................................................ 37
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................... 40
Notes...................................................................................................................................................... 40
References ............................................................................................................................................. 41
Chapter 2. The BASIC Manual .......................................................................................................... 43
BASIC – A toolkit and ethical guidelines for applying BI in public policy.......................................... 44
Note ....................................................................................................................................................... 54
Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR – Identifying and defining the problem.............................................................. 55
Note ....................................................................................................................................................... 65
Stage 2: ANALYSIS – Understanding why people act as they do .......................................................... 66
Note ....................................................................................................................................................... 88
Stage 3: STRATEGIES – BI for behaviour change ................................................................................. 89
Note ..................................................................................................................................................... 120
Stage 4: INTERVENTION – Testing BI strategies for informing public policies ................................. 121
Stage 5: CHANGE – Implementing behaviourally informed policies .................................................. 137
References ........................................................................................................................................... 145
Tables
Table 1.1. Applying BASIC to increasing enrolment in pension plans................................................. 18

Table 1.2. Considerations before applying Behavioural Insights (BI) .................................................. 19
Table 1.3. Sample questions for the priority filter questionnaire .......................................................... 21
Table 1.4. Process tools to map behaviours........................................................................................... 23
Table 1.5. Overview of ABCD framework ........................................................................................... 24
Table 2.1. Thinking aid: Considering the level of the project ............................................................... 52
Table 2.2. BI project scoping checklist ................................................................................................. 53
Table 2.3. Priority filter questionnaire .................................................................................................. 59
Table 2.4. Ethical guidelines for Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR ........................................................................ 65
Table 2.5. Ethical guidelines for Stage 2: ANALYSIS............................................................................ 81
8 │ TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table 2.6. Clusters of attributes associated with dual systems of thinking ........................................... 83
Table 2.7. Ethical guidelines for Stage 3: STRATEGY ........................................................................ 116
Table 2.8. Ethical guidelines for Stage 4: INTERVENTION ................................................................. 135
Table 2.9. Ethical guidelines for Stage 5: CHANGE ............................................................................ 143
Figures
Figure 1.1. The BASIC Framework ...................................................................................................... 17

Figure 1.2. Example of a behavioural reduction ................................................................................... 21
Figure 1.3. Example of a “SMART” outcome ...................................................................................... 22
Figure 1.4. Distinction between “slow” and “fast” thinking ................................................................. 24
Figure 1.5. Arranging choices – Which do you prefer? ........................................................................ 31
Figure 1.6. Simple randomised controlled trial (RCT) example ........................................................... 35
Figure 2.1. The BASIC framework ....................................................................................................... 46
Figure 2.2. The policy cycle .................................................................................................................. 47
Figure 2.3. Simplified sample behavioural reduction structure from a larger organisation
applying BI to health at work ........................................................................................................ 57
Figure 2.4. Schema for conceptualising behaviour as a decision point ................................................. 61
Figure 2.5. Symbols and sample behavioural flowchart ....................................................................... 62
Figure 2.6. The ABCD framework ........................................................................................................ 70
Figure 2.7. Attention ............................................................................................................................. 74
Figure 2.8. Belief formation .................................................................................................................. 75
Figure 2.9. Choice ................................................................................................................................. 77
Figure 2.10. Determination.................................................................................................................... 79
Figure 2.11. Tripartite model of thinking .............................................................................................. 84
Figure 2.12. The basic schema for explaining rather than just describing a behavioural effect............ 85
Figure 2.13. How psychological theory fits into the schema for explaining a cognitive bias ............... 85
Figure 2.14. From “proof of concept” to proof of implementation in studies on effectiveness
of nudging...................................................................................................................................... 87
Figure 2.15. Summarising a behavioural insight ................................................................................... 87
Figure 2.16. Aerial photo of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago................................................................... 98
Figure 2.17. Intuitively-coded prescription forms ................................................................................. 99
Figure 2.18. Arranging choices: which do you prefer? ....................................................................... 104
Figure 2.19. The value function of prospect theory ............................................................................ 105
Figure 2.20. Making it easy ................................................................................................................. 108
Figure 2.21. A framework for thinking about the responsible use of BI in public policy ................... 116
Figure 2.22. Basic RCT design: Post-test only.................................................................................... 123
Figure 2.23. Basic RCT design: Pre-test-post-test .............................................................................. 125
Figure 2.24. 2x2 factorial design ......................................................................................................... 126
Figure 2.25. Fractional factorial design ............................................................................................... 126
Boxes
Box 1.1. Additional BI resources .......................................................................................................... 19

Box 1.2. BI is a data-driven process ...................................................................................................... 22
Box 1.3. Map the “actual” behaviour .................................................................................................... 23
Box 1.4. How are attention biases relevant to policymaking? .............................................................. 25
Box 1.5. How are belief formation biases relevant to policymaking?................................................... 26
Box 1.6. How are choice biases relevant to policymaking? .................................................................. 27
Box 1.7. How are determination biases relevant to policymaking? ...................................................... 28
TABLE OF CONTENTS │9
Box 2.1. What are “Behavioural Insights” ............................................................................................ 44

Box 2.2. How to conduct a behavioural reduction in practice............................................................... 57
Box 2.3. How to apply a priority filter in practice ................................................................................ 58
Box 2.4. What is a behavioural problem? ............................................................................................. 59
Box 2.5. How to define behaviours in terms of decision points ............................................................ 60
Box 2.6. Some key BI frameworks ....................................................................................................... 71
Box 2.7. Critical steps for using the ABCD framework ........................................................................ 73
Box 2.8. Two cases of planning for inattention with default ................................................................ 94
Box 2.9. Two definitions of nudge ...................................................................................................... 119
Box 2.10. Power analysis .................................................................................................................... 130
Box 2.11. Real world situations conducive to randomised experiments ............................................. 132
Box 2.12. Examples of monitoring behaviourally informed policy solutions ..................................... 141
lerts
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS │ 11
Abbreviations and acronyms
ABCD Attention, belief formation, choice and determination

BASIC Behaviour, analysis, strategy, intervention and change
BI Behavioural insights
BPP Behavioural public policy
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
RCT Randomised controlled trial
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY │ 13
Executive summary
The “ABCD” of behavioural insights in public policy
Behavioural science has shown that context and biases can influence decision making.
Everday examples of this include forgetting important appointments, filling out forms
incorrectly because they are too difficult to understand, and even driving above the speed
limit because other drivers are doing so.
A better understanding of human behaviour can lead to better policies. Policy makers
looking for a more data-driven and nuanced approach to policy making should consider
what actually drives the decisions and behaviours of citizens rather than relying on
assumptions of how they should act.
This is exactly what behavioural insights (BI) provides. Drawing from rigorous research
from behavioural economics and the behavioural sciences, BI can help public bodies
understand why citizens behave as they do and pre-test which policy solutions are the most
effective before implementing them on a large scale. By integrating BI into policy making,
governments can better anticipate the behavioural consequences of a policy and, ultimately,
design and deliver more effective policies that improve the welfare of citizens.
Below are successful behaviourally informed strategies and their impact, based on the
“ABCD” of behavioural drivers:
1. Attention: People have limited attention and recall, but tend to respond to
environmental cues. For example, patients may miss their medical appointments.
A behavioural strategy would be to send SMS reminders that include the cost of a
missed appointment to the health system.
2. Belief formation: People tend to underestimate speed and be overconfident when
performing tasks, such as driving. For example, drivers may speed up at sharp
turns, resulting in more car crashes. Behavioural strategies have included painting
white lines on the road to create the illusion of speeding up, so that people slow
down.
3. Choice: People tend to align with the behaviour of others and what others think is
appropriate. For example, sending letters to residential utility customers
comparing their electricity use to that of their neighbours can drive households to
improve their energy efficiency.
4. Determination: When it comes to long-term goals, people often have difficulty
staying motivated if left to their own devices without any plans and feedback. For
example, this is often the case for job seekers struggling to find work.
Behavioural strategies have successfully used a “commitment pack” that includes
meetings with an employment advisor to create a concrete job-hunting plan.
14 │ EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At all stages in the policy cycle, policies can be improved with BI through a process that looks
at behaviours, analysis, strategies, interventions and change (abbreviated to “BASIC”). This
allows policy makers to get to the root of the policy problem, gather evidence on what works,
show support for government innovation, and ultimately improve policy outcomes. This
publication presents policy officials with a toolkit that guides them through these BASIC
stages to start using an inductive and experimental approach for more effective policymaking.
How to use the BASIC toolkit
This toolkit gives a detailed how-to manual for policy officials and practitioners working with
public agencies on applying BI to public policy, as well as a repository of approaches,
proofs of concepts and methodological standards for designing and implementing a
behaviourally-informed policy intervention. It begins with an introductory guide for
policy officials on the process through which BI can identify, scope and address policy
problems.
1. INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO BASIC │ 15
Chapter 1. Introductory guide to BASIC
This section provides a practical instrument for policy officials working in ministries,
departments and public agencies on what is the process through which the behavioural
aspects of a problem can be identified, scoped and addressed.
16 │ 1. INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO BASIC
Introduction
Have you ever grabbed a chocolate bar at the check-out line only to regret it later? Filled
up your entire bowl with pasta even though you intended to only take a small portion?
Found yourself sticking with the side of chips or fries, instead of substituting for a salad?
It is easy to make unhealthy choices even when you choose to be healthy. These everyday
choices add up. Today, more than one in two adults are overweight or obese in OECD
countries (OECD, 2017b). Around the world, obesity-related illness is estimated to cost
USD 1.2 trillion by 2025 (WOF, 2015). Why do people make such choices? Before
making assumptions, it is important to consider what drives decision-making given the
specific context.
This is where behavioural insights (BI) can help. BI is a tool based on the idea that
context and behavioural biases influence our decision-making. As a policymaker, you can
use BI to address “wicked problems” like obesity to better design and deliver policy
outcomes.
To integrate BI into your day-to-day work, you can use the BASIC process to analyse
Behaviours, conduct an Analysis, develop Strategies, test them with Interventions, and
scale up results for policy Change.1 For example, if your desired policy outcome is to
lower adult obesity rates, then you can start by selecting a relevant, specific behaviour
(i.e. proportion of healthy items ordered from restaurant menus).
Say you learn that 60% of residents who eat out frequently intend to take the healthy
options but end up choosing burgers. You start by writing your assumptions to explain
why:
 Information: Residents do not know exactly how calorific burgers are.
 Cost: Residents find burgers to be cheaper than the healthier options.
 Access: Residents cannot easily access restaurants that serve healthy options.
At first, you may consider traditional policy instruments to address each cause:
 Require calorie labelling on restaurant menus.
 Implement a junk food tax on burgers to make them less affordable.
 Provide a tax credit to restaurants that provide healthy alternatives to increase
availability.
In theory, better information, prices, or access should lead to healthier eating habits. This
is aligned with classical economic theory that assumes individuals will choose the
rational decision that maximises their utility. People use information to make better
decisions so you may assume that the more information they have about how unhealthy
burgers are, the more likely they will choose a healthier option that will benefit them in
the long-run.
Unfortunately, we know, even from our own personal experience, that this is not always
the case. This is the central idea behind BI, which is built on extensive research from the
field of behavioural economics and the behavioural sciences that have repeatedly found
that people systematically deviate from traditionally explained rational behaviour. This is
not to say individuals are irrational but rather that you cannot always rely on your
assumptions that people will always make the decision that leads to the best outcome for
them.
By understanding how people actually react and behave in different situations, you can
better anticipate the behavioural consequences of your policy and ultimately design
policies that can help citizens make the healthy choice. Below in italics, you will find
examples of how you can use existing BI research to complement traditional policy
instruments:
 Require calories labelling on restaurant menus that put calorie counts before the
food item because people give disproportionate weight to the first piece of
information they see. Dallas (2019) found that displaying calories first resulted in
a 16.31% decrease in ordered calories
 Implement a junk food tax that requires the price hike of burgers to be clearly
marked on the menu because a price difference is more salient at the point of
decision-making. Chetty (2009) found that tax-inclusive prices reduced demand
by 8%.
 Provide a tax credit to restaurants that only provide healthy options because
adding healthy items next to burgers can vicariously fulfil healthy-eating goals
and increase indulgent eating habits. Wilcox (2009) found that adding a healthy
alternative increased unhealthy ordering by 230%.
At this point, you can choose which solution(s) is/are the most appropriate in your
context, and test which is the most effective in increasing the proportion of healthy items
ordered from restaurant menus. Through testing, you will gain evidence-based results to
inform your policy to lower adult obesity rates before setting policy and full-scale
implementation.
This approach is not only limited to healthy eating or complementing traditional policy
levers. By integrating BI from the start of the policy cycle, policymakers can design
behaviourally informed policies on a variety of issues that go with the grain of how
people actually behave rather than go against it, and ultimately improve outcomes without
compromising people’s autonomy. This guidebook helps you get started by breaking a
policy issue down to its behavioural components and identifying potential behavioural
barriers that can undermine the intended policy outcome or enablers that can ultimately
enhance the effectiveness of the policy. It uses a process that guides the policymaker
through Behaviours, Analysis, Strategies, Interventions and Change (abbreviated
“BASIC”) to apply BI to any policy problem from start to finish (see Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1. The BASIC Framework
BEHAVIOUR
Behaviour ANALYSIS
Analysis STRATEGIES
Solution INTERVENTION CHANGE
What is BASIC?
BASIC is a toolkit that equips the policymaker with best practice tools, methods and
ethical guidelines for conducting BI projects from the beginning to the end of a public
policy cycle. Earlier BI frameworks have primarily focused on the end stages of the
policy cycle such as experimentation or compliance while less emphasis is placed on the
behavioural analysis of a policy problem (OECD, 2017a). BASIC aims to bridge this gap
by providing guidance on how to apply to BI to ex ante appraisal as well as the ex post
evaluation stage of a policy cycle. This approach is reflected in the five stages of BASIC
(Table 1.1). By understanding how and under what circumstances BI can be applied to
cause behaviour change, policymakers are far more likely to design and deliver more
effective policies.
Table 1.1. Applying BASIC to increasing enrolment in pension plans
Stage Description Example

Behaviour Identify and better understand your policy Increase pension savings by encouraging more
problem. citizens to enrol in pension plans.
Analysis Review the available evidence to identify the Individuals tend to stick with defaults and choose
behavioural drivers of the problem. inaction over action.
Strategy Translate the analysis to behaviourally informed Change the default. Automatically enrol
strategies. individuals into pension plans and allow them to
opt-out.
Intervention Design and implement an intervention to test Test whether allowing individuals to opt-out
which strategy best addresses the problem. increases pension savings rather than the current
practice of opt-in.
Change Develop plans to scale and sustain behaviour. Share results with citizens, apply findings to
system-wide reminders and monitor long-term
consequences of the intervention.
Source: Adapted from Thaler, R.H. and S. Benartzi (2004), “Save more tomorrow: Using behavioral
economics to increase employee saving”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 112(1), University of Chicago.
As you read through the BASIC Guidebook, you will gain an introduction to
behaviourally informed policymaking and a brief overview of testing and
implementation. This is geared towards policymakers who know the policy problem and
context but have limited or even no experience with BI. You can find approaches, proofs
of concepts and details on methods for designing and implementing a behaviourally
informed policy intervention in the BASIC Manual accompanying by an introductory
guide.
Specifically, the guide will give you:
 A practical and in-depth look into the first three sections, BEHAVIOUR,2
ANALYSIS and STRATEGIES to identify a behaviour that is driving the policy issue
and why, and design actionable strategies based on the behavioural analyses.
 Outline of the INTERVENTION section that provides general guidance on engaging
with behavioural experts and stakeholders at the testing stage.
 High-level recommendations for the CHANGE section so policymakers can make
an informed decision when planning to scale and disseminate results after testing.
 Ethical considerations for each step of BASIC.
What you need to know before you keep reading

Integrating BI throughout the policy cycle can enhance the design and delivery of policy
outcomes, but it has several areas that you should consider as a policymaker before
moving forward.
First, ethics should be a priority from the onset. The BI approach has specific ethical
concerns that are different from traditional public policy because it often involves the use
of primary data of individual- or group-level behaviours and leverages behavioural biases
to inform policies. As public policy operates within a transparent setting and has
far-reaching implications, it is important to integrate ethical considerations when applying
BI from the start to the end of the policy cycle. The final section includes overall ethical
considerations and specific guidelines for every stage of BASIC.
Second, you should be aware of both the benefits and limitations of BI. Table 1.2 gives a
high-level summary of considerations before deciding if BI is the right fit for your
project.
Table 1.2. Considerations before applying Behavioural Insights (BI)
What BI is What BI is not

Problem-solving method Silver bullet
BI is a powerful method to better understand policy problems BI is not a silver bullet that solves all policy challenges.
and pre-test solutions before they are implemented across a Some policy issues may benefit more from traditional policy
wide range of policy issues. levers (i.e. financial, regulatory or awareness-raising
approaches) or alternative non-traditional tools (i.e. human
centred design or machine learning).
Way to learn “what works” One-size-fits-all
The BI culture of empirically testing solutions and Replicating what works in one environment does not
disseminating results allows practitioners and academics to guarantee success in another environment. Ethical
exchange evidence on lessons learned to inform considerations should also be adapted to the context.
policymaking. Pre-testing solutions in the context where you plan to
implement the policy minimises this risk.
Beyond nudging 1.0 Only for behavioural experts
BI goes beyond nudging or small policy tweaks. BI is not limited to behavioural experts. A multi-disciplinary
BI represents a wide range of tools to use evidence to approach is key for BI projects. BI brings together diverse
diagnose problems, bridge the gap between research and expertise such as knowledge of the policy context,
practice, and inform comprehensive policy solutions. behavioural science and first-hand experience with public
service.
Policy tool Irrationality
BI should be considered every time you are designing or BI does not suggest that humans are fundamentally
evaluating a policy. Even in cases where you may not be irrational creatures. Rather, it argues that deviations from
able to start with a behavioural analysis or run a full “traditionally explained rational” behaviour are not the result
experiment, BI can still be used to complement traditional of flawed reasoning but rather adaptive forms of reasoning
policy tools and levers throughout the policy cycle. that can also constitute efficient heuristics (i.e. mental
shortcuts or intuitive judgments) in an uncertain world.
As a reminder, the guide is by no means the only resource to apply BI to policymaking. In

addition to the BASIC Manual, there are other useful frameworks and reports to aid you
in your BI project. Box 1.1 shares some key resources that can provide additional tools
and examples to complement the approach provided by BASIC.
Box 1.1. Additional BI resources
With the rise of BI around the world, a number of useful frameworks have been
developed by both government and non-government agencies. BASIC has been
developed to fill a need in the community for how to implement behaviourally informed
public policy.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of widely referenced frameworks that complement BASIC

and could be a resource for policymakers looking for different ways to analyse a
behavioural problem.
 MINDSPACE (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2010): Provided an early
checklist for thinking about how nine well-evidenced behavioural insights may
inform public policy development, design and delivery.
 Test, Learn, and Adapt (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2013): Gave an
accessible introduction to the basics of using randomised controlled trials in
policy evaluation.
 EAST Framework (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2014): Provided a simple
framework considering how behavioural insights may help design policies based
on leveraging convenience, social aspects of decision-making and the
attractiveness and timeliness of policies.
 World Development Report Mind, Society, and Behavior (World Bank, 2015):
Gave a comprehensive overview of how the BI perspective on human decision-
making is of relevance to development policy.
 Define, Diagnose, Design, Test (ideas42, 2017): Provided a practical framework
for thinking through a problem and identifying behaviourally informed solutions.
 US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Behavioral Insights Toolkit (IRS, 2017):
Created to be a practical resource for use by IRS employees and researchers who
are looking to use BI in their work.
 Assess, Aim, Action, Amend (BEAR, 2018): Presented a playbook developed for
applying BI in organisations outlining four steps for applying BI.
Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR
BI is more effective the earlier you integrate it into your policy initiative. The first stage,
BEHAVIOUR, focuses on problem definition. Applying BI at this early stage is ideal
because it is less likely that concrete solutions are developed and more likely that
innovative approaches are welcomed. As a starting point, this section provides you with
the tools to think through four key questions to help identify and define the behavioural
aspects of the policy issue:
1. What are the behaviours driving the policy issue?
2. Which behaviour(s) should you target?
3. What is your desired policy outcome?
4. What is the context shaping target behaviours?
What are the behaviours driving the policy issue?

Before applying BI to any policy issue, it is important to define in as much detail as
possible the behavioural elements of the problem. You can start brainstorming by using a
Behavioural Reduction tool to identify relevant concrete behaviours that are relevant to
your policy issue. Engaging stakeholders, citizens and/or behavioural experts even at this
early stage can help generate insights into the behavioural aspects of the problem that you
may have not been aware of as a policy official (Figure 1.2).
Throughout this process, it is important to remember that every item may not be
behavioural (i.e. generate interest in composting). Although these are important to
identify, the focus of this exercise should be on behaviour(s) that can be measured
(i.e. register for composting programme) and not on opinions, values or structural aspects
of the problem.
Figure 1.2. Example of a behavioural reduction
Behavioural reduction
1. Write the policy area at the top.

Energy use
2. Draw relevant strategic domains.

Workplace Residential
behaviour behaviour
3. List as many concrete decisions,

Bring own coffee Switch to energy- Do laundry
behaviours and procedures for Take the train for
mugs to meetings efficient appliances during off-peak
work trips
each strategic domain as possible. vs. single-use
vs. planes
vs. keep old
appliances
vs.
cups on-peak hours
Which behaviour(s) should you target?

When choosing which relevant behaviour to pursue, in addition to financial and political
feasibility, there are several considerations that are specific to BI projects. The priority
filter questionnaire can be a guide to generate a more holistic discussion on which
elements are important to the project and apply this to the selection of the target
behaviour.
The priority filter questionnaire is a decision-tool composed of weighted questions that
reflect important considerations for the success of the behavioural project. For each
question, you can rate the target behaviour (i.e. on a scale from 1 = “definitely not” to
5 = “definitely”), pre-determine a cut-off (i.e. questions that score at least a 4.8 will be
considered) and calculate the overall score for each. Although each questionnaire is
tailored to the project, Table 1.3 presents some general questions to consider. This can be
an iterative process, so keep coming back to these questions as priorities may change as
you learn more about the behaviour, context and relevant behavioural biases.
Table 1.3. Sample questions for the priority filter questionnaire
Areas Sample questions

Importance Is a change in behaviour an institutional priority?
Ethics Are there any potential risks or unintended consequences when pursuing the desired behaviour? Are
there uneven risks (i.e. positive for the majority but harmful risks for minority groups)?
Impact Will changing the target individual behaviour translate to a significant societal impact?
Feasibility Is it politically feasible? Are resources available? Is it controversial?
Data access Is baseline data readily available? Can you collect individual or group-level prospective data?
Frequency Does the behaviour occur frequently? Is there a reasonable base rate for the preferred behaviour?
What is your desired policy outcome?

As you begin to narrow down your target behaviour, it is also important to start defining a
roadmap for your policy initiative. One way is to write down what a meaningful outcome
would look like for your policy initiative. You can craft a well-defined outcome specific
to your target behaviour(s) by defining the following criteria (Figure 1.3):
 Specific to the target behaviour.
 Measurable to assess and quantify results.
 Assignable to a specific group of individuals.
 Realistic given the time, budget and resources available for the project.
 Time-related to ensure outcomes are achieved within a specified time period.
Figure 1.3. Example of a “SMART” outcome
Specific: Define a quantifiable target at a Realistic: If the baseline rate is low (i.e. 10%), then aiming
key decision point. for a 20% increase (12%) is a realistic goal.
The outcome is to increase savings by 20% upon receipt of income

among low-income workers with mobile bank accounts by January 2020.
Assignable: Focus on a Measurable: Mobile phone notifications and amount saved Time-related: Clear timeframe when the
specific type of user. can be counted on an individual- or group-level. measurement will be made.
Source: Adapted from Doran, G.T. (1981), “There’s a SMART way to write management’s goals and
objectives”, Management Review, Vol. 70(11), pp. 35-36.
Box 1.2. BI is a data-driven process
Knowing which data can be used and generated will better prepare you for the
INTERVENTION section. When defining your outcome, consider what kind of data can be
collected, how much resources it costs and ways to ensure that collection does not
compromise data privacy. For example, determine if you can link who received which
phone notifications (intervention) with who transferred part of their income towards
savings (outcome). Finally, understand the ethical considerations or preparations
(i.e. ethical review board) necessary to protect user privacy and your organisation.
What is the context shaping target behaviours?

Gaining a deeper understanding of where the target behaviour occurs or is the most likely
to occur can shed light on how this affects your desired policy outcome. A process map
that outlines decision points immediately before, during and after the target behaviour can
help pinpoint areas where you can potentially design a behavioural intervention.
A process map is a visual tool that identifies touchpoints for the key actors engaging in
your target behaviour(s). Although this is not an exhaustive list, Table 1.4 shares a
number of popular process tools available, especially from the fields of psychology and
design research.
Table 1.4. Process tools to map behaviours
Tool Description Key features

Behavioural flowchart Detailed process chart that places key Identifies potential loose ends and friction
decision points in a broader process. points that inhibit the efficiency and reliability
of the process.
Behavioural mapping Map that reflects patterns of movement and Allows you to relate various observed
behaviour within a given environment. behaviours to particular locations, types of
users and over time.
User journey mapping Timeline which outlines each touchpoint that Reflects the actions, mind-sets and emotions
the user experiences to perform the key of users through visualisation and storytelling.
behaviour. Commonly used in UX design for products and
services.
Service blueprinting Extension of the user journey map that Clarifies interactions between service users,
visualises the relationship between different digital touchpoints and activities that are both
service components. seen and unseen by the user.
Sources: Ng, C.F. (2016), “Behavioural mapping and tracking”, Research Methods for Environmental
Psychology, Vol. 29; Gibbons, S. (2018), Journey Mapping 101, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-
mapping-101/; OECD/OPSI (n.d.), Practical Service Blueprinting – The Guide, https://oecd-
opsi.org/toolkits/practical-service-blueprinting-the-guide/.
Box 1.3. Map the “actual” behaviour
The process map should reflect how people “actually” behave rather than how they
should behave. Speaking to or surveying relevant stakeholders and target individuals can
generate helpful insights. Observations can expose new insights because people may not
provide honest answers, not remember past behaviour or not be consciously aware of
their own behaviours or biases (Ng, 2016). If you are using a user journey map, go to
actual users, observe their process and listen to their real-time feedback. If you are using
the behavioural flowchart, observe friction points such as delays to know how long the
delays really are.
Stage 2: ANALYSIS
Once you have identified the behavioural problems at the heart of your policy issue, it is
important to understand why people behave as they do. The second section, ANALYSIS,
aims to examine, through the lens of BI, which psychological and cognitive factors are
causing the targeted behaviours.
Introduction to “slow” and “fast” thinking

Analysing these behaviours starts by drawing a distinction between “slow” and “fast”
thinking (Kahneman, 2011; Figure 1.4). In broad terms, behavioural science shows that
we rely on two types of cognitive processes – a cognitive process that is slow, deliberate
and conscious (i.e. reason through a math problem) and a cognitive process that is fast,
automatic, intuitive and by and large unconscious (i.e. recognise the emotion on the face
of a friend).
Figure 1.4. Distinction between “slow” and “fast” thinking
THINKING FAST THINKING SLOW
UNCONSCIOUS CONSCIOUS
INTUITIVE REFLECTIVE
AUTOMATIC DELIBERATE
Source: Adapted from Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Macmillan.
Many of the behavioural problems that BI tackles are the result of intuitions which we
form when we “think fast”. In particular, we can identify four main aspects of behaviour
that tend to cause the biases involved in behavioural problems: Attention; Belief
formation; Choice; and Determination (ABCD). This “ABCD framework” assists you in
analysing and diagnosing behavioural problems. The framework, and how each aspect
departs from rational choice theory, is summarised in Table 1.5.
Table 1.5. Overview of ABCD framework
Aspect What rationality says What BI shows Example

Attention People should focus on what is People’s attention is limited and Forgetting an appointment.
most important in light of their easily distracted.
knowledge and preferences.
Belief formation People should form their beliefs People rely on mental shortcuts Underestimating how long a
according to the rules of logic or intuitive judgments and often task will take.
and probability. over/underestimate outcomes
and probabilities.
Choice People should choose so as to People are influenced by the Being influenced by what our
maximise their expected utility. framing and the social as well social circle thinks is the right
as situational context of thing to do rather than choosing
choices. the rational option.
Determination Provided that one decides to People’s willpower is limited Failing to quit smoking.
pursue certain long-term goals, and subject to psychological
one should stick to the plan. biases.
Tip: Familiarise with the behaviour

Before you delve into the ANALYSIS section using ABCD, use the process map that you
created from the BEHAVIOUR section to make sure you are familiar with the target
behaviour. If a process map is not feasible, it is still advisable to examine past data on the
behaviour or find ways to locally observe or engage in the behaviour.
Reminder: Flexible methodologies

When studying behaviours, you can adopt flexible research designs. This means that the
type and number of methods used in your study might vary as data collection continues.
Attention
Have you ever failed to take medication or to file taxes on time? These are everyday
examples of attentional problems that originate from our cognitive limitations. Humans
have a finite ability to sift through a large amount of information and to focus on what is
important.
Attention is often scarce, easily distracted and quickly overwhelmed. This results in
individuals having a hard time making choices based on relevant information and
aligning their decisions with their intrinsic preferences. Common examples of inattention
are forgetting commitments and overlooking non-obvious information (or “salient,” in BI
terms); as well as falling prey to distractions while working.
As we will see in the STRATEGIES section, behaviourally informed policy solutions can
target attention problems by focusing on making the key information salient and
understandable, seizing the person’s attention and planning for inattention in the decision-
making process. In particular, getting the timing of an intervention right can really make
the difference between the success or failure of a policy.
Guiding questions for attention biases
1. Is the targeted decision point well-timed3 and placed in a context where people are
in a suitable state of mind?
2. What is seizing people’s attention in that particular context?
3. What happens if people are inattentive at the decision point? Is there a default
safety mechanism in place?
Box 1.4. How are attention biases relevant to policymaking?
Attention biases have been shown to affect numerous domains of relevance for
policymakers. For example, they can affect the number of people who enrol in pensions
(Thaler and Benartzi, 2004) or donate organs (Johnston and Goldstein, 2004) when they
do not actively exercise their attention and just choose the default option that a system
offers them.
Equally, forgetfulness can have important effects on important health and legal effects if,
for instance, people do not show up to court (Ideas42, 2018) or doctor’s appointments
because of memory limitations.
Sources: Thaler, R.H. and S. Benartzi (2004), “Save more tomorrow: Using behavioral economics to increase
employee saving”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 112(1), University of Chicago; Johnson, E.J. and
D.G. Goldstein (2004), “Defaults and donation decisions”, Transplantation, Vol. 78(12), pp. 1713–6;
ideas42 (2018), Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes Preventing Failures to
Appear in Court, https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/store/9c86b123e3b00a5da58318f438a6e787dd0
1d66d0efad54d66aa232a6473/I42-954_NYCSummonsPaper_Final_Mar2018.pdf.
Belief formation
It is a well-replicated finding in the social psychology literature that, when asked to
compare their driving skills to other people, the majority of participants (up to around
90%, as in Svenson (1981), rank themselves in the top 50% – which cannot possibly be
mathematically true.
This form of overconfidence is in line with the behavioural findings on belief formation,
which show that individuals tend to rely on a coherent worldview to make predictions and
decisions. In doing so, they ignore relevant information that goes against their views or
only accept information that confirms these beliefs. The consequence can be
over/underestimation of outcomes, missing relevant information and relying “too much”
on heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments) to make decisions.
As we will see in the STRATEGIES section, behaviourally informed solutions provide
processes and tools to move away from this confirmation bias with a view of supporting
good judgment and accurately assessing probabilities.
Guiding questions for belief formation biases:
1. What are people’s pre-existing beliefs? What questions direct their search?
2. How does context interact with belief formation?
Box 1.5. How are belief formation biases relevant to policymaking?
While they are only rarely within the scope of policy discussions, erroneous beliefs can
be a real threat to policymakers. For example, if a population misperceives the probability
of high-consequence events such as natural catastrophes or terrorist attacks (Sunstein,
2003), this might affect the appropriateness of the time and resources their community
spends to prevent them.
Moreover, cognitive traits linked to belief formation, and notably overconfidence, have
been linked to issues of high priority for policy, such as financial crises (Lo, 2013) or
people’s beliefs about whether climate change will personally impact them (Gifford et al.,
2009).
Sources: Sunstein, C.R. (2003), “Terrorism and probability neglect”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty,
Vol. 26(283), pp. 121-136; Lo, A.W. (2013), “Fear, greed, and financial crises: A cognitive neurosciences
perspective”, in Handbook of Systemic Risk, Cambridge University Press; Gifford, R. et al. (2009), “Temporal
pessimism and spatial optimism in environmental assessments: An 18-nation study”, Journal of
Environmental Psychology, Vol. 29, pp. 1–12.
Choice
Have you ever been confronted with too many options for you to possibly choose the best
one? This phenomenon is defined as choice overload and is one of the ways in which our
decision-making is influenced by behavioural factors.
The context and moment in which we make choices have a distinct upshot on whether we
will choose the best option according to our preferences. Often, people value more
intrinsic factors and motivation like the feeling of “doing the right thing” than purely
material or economic incentives, running sometimes counter to traditional economic
models. Failing to think of all rational and irrational aspects of choice can lead to policies
that miss the driver of individuals’ decisions.
Behaviourally informed solutions test possible choice mechanisms and use the results to
inform decisions.
Guiding questions for choice biases:
1. What makes a given choice attractive to people?

2. How are choices framed?
Box 1.6. How are choice biases relevant to policymaking?
Biases in choices can have negative consequences on important policy outcomes. Think,
for example, of how biases are used to sell us things we do not want or guide us to certain
choices over others. Instances include restaurants that structure their menus strategically
or airline companies that exploit people’s inattention and set the purchase of flight
insurance as a default option (European Commission, 2014). Having awareness of these
choice biases is fundamental in order to create responsive regulatory regimes that
effectively protect consumers in the market. It is in this context that behaviourally
informed interventions can be leveraged for “better information disclosure, access to
customer service, usage and consumption of data and understanding of bundled services”
(OECD, 2016).
Sources: European Commission (2014), “Taking consumer rights into the digital age: over 507 million
citizens will benefit as of today”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-655_en.htm
(accessed on 07 November 2018); OECD (2016), Protecting Consumers through Behavioural Insights:
Regulating the Communications Market in Colombia, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255463-en.
Determination
Taking the right decision is not enough, as anyone who has ever subscribed to a gym and
then hardly attended can easily understand! Individuals can have a hard time sticking to
some of their choices over time because of issues with will-power, self-regulation, self-
control and choice architectures that guide people away from their decisions.
Problems with determination involve the psychological discomfort of not being able to
achieve a long-term goal and guide people to search for immediate gratification.
Determination challenges can also create mental taxation or exhaustion, which has been
shown to decrease our decision-making abilities. Finally, the determination biases can
create a climate of inertia and procrastination and eventually lead to excessive self-
directed blame.
As the STRATEGIES section suggests, behaviourally informed solutions take into
consideration these commitment biases and provide plans and feedback to increase
determination, for example by using reminders and commitment devices.
Guiding questions for determination biases:
1. What are the points of friction relative to the desired behaviour? Is it too easy to
do the wrong thing?
2. Do people have plans and are they given feedback?
3. How do performance and goal achievement interact with the social context? For
example, do people commit to their long-term goals privately or publicly? And
what kind of expectations do such commitments create in other people?
Box 1.7. How are determination biases relevant to policymaking?
Intention-action gaps can bring about many policy problems and make existing policies
ineffective. For example, they have clear implications for public health, which is hugely
impacted by people’s limited ability to act upon their desire to lead a healthy lifestyle, in
terms of exercising and eating healthy but also, for instance, quitting smoking.
Similarly, it may impact people’s ability to think long terms, in terms of monetary
savings as well as in the case of sustainable behaviour.
Stage 3: STRATEGIES
Building on your behavioural analysis, the next step is to identify behaviourally informed
strategies that will effectively change the identified behaviours that you wish to or can
address, at the root of your policy problem.
Translating your analysis to actionable strategies inevitably requires some level of
familiarity with previous research in the behavioural field, so it is advisable to refer to the
expertise of a behavioural team or expert. Nevertheless, having a preliminary
understanding of the key principles behind the most common behavioural strategies will
facilitate your relationship with behavioural experts and allow you to better understand
how to reduce the behavioural barriers at stake.
The goal of this chapter is to get overview of the concepts that you can use to generate
behaviourally informed solutions. Because these strategies are strictly grounded in the
first two stages of BASIC, the section will also follow the structure of the ABCD
framework.
Targeting attention
Attentional issues are rarely at the centre of the development, design and delivery of
public policies. Yet, as mentioned in the ANALYSIS stage, inattention is widespread and it
can make the difference between failure and success of a policy. For this reason, it may
prove effective to revise and design policy interventions so that they become more
relevant, seize attention and, if this is not possible, so that they plan for inattention.
Make it relevant
For interventions to work effectively, it is first of all important to engage with people in
impactful ways. This means engaging with them at the right time, in the right place and at
the point where they are most willing to enact the behaviour that you aim to promote.
Some behavioural insights to keep in mind in this regard:
 State of mind: People’s abilities and motivation are not constants (Loewenstein,
1996) but rather are influenced by their current state of mind. For example, if you
are hungry or tired, you are more likely to make mistakes, make worse decisions
and eat bad food.
 Timing and placement of an intervention play a huge role in whether people will
pay attention. For instance, to increase the likelihood of people paying fines, it
might be strategic to time the deadlines of fines and charges relative to when
people receive their pay. Similarly, placing healthy food at eye-level rather than
far from sight could positively impact people’s choices (Thaler and Sunstein,
2008).
Seize attention
One of the ingredients that can make an intervention successful is simply making sure to
seize people’s attention. Behavioural insights shows us that people often fail to attend to
what may be perceived to be important in a given context. In light of this knowledge, you
should always carefully consider how to design the details of your policy intervention so
that people will not overlook what is important for the intervention to succeed. Three BI
strategies can help to do so:
 Make it salient: Activate, guide or retain focus on a particular aspect of the choice
architecture so that people attend to it. A famous example of this principle is a
behavioural experiment in the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where engraving
silhouettes of flies into the urinals reduced spillage by 80% and cleaning costs by
8% (Evans-Pritchard, 2013).
 Reminders: Send reminders and trigger an association in people’s memory.
Reminders are becoming increasingly relevant due to digitisation and have been
shown to successfully induce behaviour change in a vast array of domains,
including health outcomes (Stubbs et al., 2012).
 Prompts: Using prompts is another powerful way of grabbing people’s attention.
Prompts are now especially common in the online universe in the form of pop-up
boxes and they work by interrupting people’s ongoing action and forcing them to
make a decision before being able to proceed.
Plan for inattention

Examining what happens when attention fails and then planning and designing for
inattention is also a central strategy for dealing with attentional problems.
Defaults
We increasingly rely on defaults or pre-set choices to decide for us when we do not have
the time or capacity to carefully examine the vast array of choices available. It is,
therefore, crucial to get the arrangement of defaults right and to prevent their misuse. In
particular, if your policy issue involves defaults, ensure that these are well aligned with
individual and societal preferences, in order to guarantee compliance with ethical
standards. It is also important to consider active decision-making, by sometimes still
offering a choice, otherwise, defaults could backfire.
Targeting belief formation

What is the best way of preventing the formation of erroneous beliefs and inaccurate
interpretations of probabilities? Effective strategies include guiding search, making
inferences intuitive and supporting judgments.
Guide search
Problems in belief formation usually go hand in hand with vast amounts of information
and possibilities: people have too much information and too little time to process it. Tips
for avoiding this include:
 Searching by aspects: Allow people to use filters to partition the set of options
they are given. This kind of “search by aspects” has proven useful to guide people
through complex informational sets, such as in the online search for flights, hotels
or job-openings where people can prioritise which features are most important in
their search.
 Question trees: We are all familiar with call centres guiding us to the right service
section by using prompts such as “press 1 for English”. Using this type of Q&A
tools (sometimes called “question trees”) is another powerful way to guide users
to the right answer and help people find their way around vast and complex sets
of information. In the public policy domain, this could, for example, be applied to
guide citizens to the information they need when interacting with public bodies.
Make it intuitive
If you want to help people navigate information, it is also important to structure
information in a way that is easy for them to understand. The concept of “intuitive
coding” might prove crucial for putting in place user-centric interfaces in public policy,
such as creating medical prescription forms that are intuitive for any citizen and will help
them adopt the right behaviour (King et al., 2014).
Similarly, adjusting information architecture and layout on public websites so that, in BI
terms, it conforms to their “mental models” (i.e. resembles what they are used to,
searching for, or browse most frequently) may significantly improve the functionality and
experience of the service.
Support judgment
People inform their beliefs from pre-existing beliefs. In doing so, people use their
intuition and an array of mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments (i.e. heuristics) to make
decisions in uncertain contexts. This plays a part in forming beliefs in specific contexts.
This knowledge can be used to design effective STRATEGIES:
 Adapt to heuristics: Your policy interventions should strive to present information
in a way that allows for the appropriate application of heuristics. The setup of the
intervention should match, rather than conflict with, people’s intuitions.
 Leverage social proof: When people are uncertain about what is the right thing to
do in a given context, they often look at the behaviour of others in an attempt to
make sense of the world. By highlighting a positive behavioural norm,
practitioners may support judgment by “de-biasing” the existing misperception or
potentially promote the misperception that the positive behaviour is more
common than it actually is, which might result in people adopting the desired
behaviour.
Targeting choice
Make it attractive
“The fundamental law of choice is that of attraction” (Hansen, 2018). When faced with a
set of options, people usually select the option that they find most attractive. If you want
to make your desired policy outcome more appealing, consider the following insights:
 Consider motives: What are people’s drivers and incentives in your policy
context? Getting a sense of their extrinsic and intrinsic preferences will allow you
to align your intervention with people’s strongest motives.
 Create perspectives: When people hold weak preferences over options,
highlighting an attribute that may provide a secondary motive for choosing among
options might be an effective way of helping people make choices.
 Trigger emotions: Our emotions are a fundamental factor when navigating
choices. To choose, we internally simulate the consequences of making
one choice over another. Anticipating your public’s emotions can thus help you
understand what kind of strategies will work best in your environment. Ethics is
very important in this strategy.
Frame prospects
Whenever we face a set of options, we are also confronted with a set of possible futures,
i.e. prospects. Arrangement and formulation of these options matters in determining
which choice will be chosen.
Figure 1.5. Arranging choices – Which do you prefer?
A. Which do you prefer? B. Which do you prefer now?
EUR 2.50 EUR 3.50 EUR 2.50 EUR 3.50 EUR 4.50
Source: Produced by the OECD with images obtained free of copyright from Pixabay user TKaucic (2017)
https://pixabay.com/vectors/coffee-cup-cup-of-coffee-drink-2819815/.
To illustrate the potential effect of arranging choices, consider the choice options in the
two arrangements in Figure 1.5. As can be understood intuitively, some people who
prefer the small coffee in the first setting actually have a preference for the medium size
in the second setting, as people have a tendency to choose the middle option rather than
extremes (the compromise effect).
Prospect theory, one of the theoretical pillars of behavioural economics, provides an

explanation for this and shows that people think in terms of expected utility relative to a
reference point rather than absolute terms. Furthermore, the theory indicates that “losses
loom larger than gains”, meaning that people are more strongly affected by the prospect
of loss than the prospect of gains.
Practitioners might use prospect theory when deciding how to formulate simple
prospects, such as those faced by citizens when making everyday decisions in their
interaction with public bodies.
Make it social
Humans are, first and foremost, social animals. Yet, this is often overlooked in public
policy, where they are treated as individual citizens and consumers. Connecting with the
social identities and norms that informally regulate human groups is an invaluable
strategy to spark behaviour change. Two main insights to do so include:
 Connect with social identities and consider peer comparison: This mechanism is
what drives people’s sense of status, recognition and identification with a group
and a powerful force behind their behaviours.
 Create a sense of community: Would you rather go to a popular theatre or
restaurant or to an empty one? Most of people’s choices ultimately have deeply
ingrained social dimensions to them. Observing the role that a sense of
community may play for how people make choices and creating a sense of
community around certain activities may hold the key for influencing and creating
behaviour change. This is evidenced by big marathon events, communal eating
events, and charity fundraising.
Targeting determination
Finally, we overview STRATEGIES to overcome the intention-action gap. Simply, if you
want people to achieve a goal, you should strive to make it easy for them to achieve it.
Otherwise, even relatively small obstacles may become a reason for people to postpone
action.
 Work with friction: Reducing the hassle-factor and simplification can make it
easier to take up a preferable service or performing an action. This might translate
into reducing the number of actions, clicks or questions people need to go through
to achieve a goal. The simpler it is to perform an action, the more likely it is that
people will do it.
 Provide plans and feedback: As anyone who has been on a diet can understand,
behaviour change requires that goal-directed behaviours are not just initiated or
considered once or twice, but are also continuously maintained over time. Mental
taxation and balancing of competing goals can easily lead to failure. On the
contrary, making concrete and specific action plans towards a goal can help
people harness their inner resources (boost) and accomplish their goal.
 Commitment devices: Make use of strategies that will help people follow their
plan of action. For example, encourage people to publicly, rather than privately,
commit to a certain goal so they will have the added incentive of maintaining their
reputation.
 Leverage social norms: These are the mutual expectations that govern the
behaviour of members of groups and societies. These can lead people to forego
self-serving behaviour in favour of fairness and persist even when everyone in the
group would prefer the norm did not exist. In some situations, these norms can
help achieve policy goals – especially when promoting pro-social behaviour – but
care should be taken as they intervene and make use of the structures and
foundations of society.
Stage 4: INTERVENTION
After developing your BI strategies, the next stage is to participate in the design of an
intervention that will test which strategies are the most effective to reach your policy
outcome. Your understanding of the context and relationships with key stakeholders are
essential to identify where, when and among whom the intervention can take place. In
parallel, this is another opportunity to rely on behavioural experts who have rigorous
research skills and subject matter expertise to lead the intervention design, consult on its
implementation and conduct analyses of the results.
At this stage, you can work with stakeholders and behavioural experts to choose which BI
strategies are the most relevant because testing too many strategies can become expensive
and messy. To increase the likelihood of a successful behavioural intervention, below are
some preliminary considerations to discuss with your key stakeholders and behavioural
experts. This will enable you to align expectations and make necessary changes early on
in the experimental design.
 Define success. There no single definition for a successful BI project. Take the
time to understand what success looks like for you, your stakeholders and the
experts at the start of your project to manage expectations.
 Involve user-tests early on when piloting BI strategies. When moving into the
research and design stage, a first step is to involve users in testing aspects of the
solutions that the strategies give rise to.
 Explore research designs. Seek consultation on whether an experiment or
another design is the best fit for the project. Explore digital platforms that may
make it easier to randomly assign and deliver the intervention in a cost-effective
way. If testing in a real-life setting (field trial) is not possible, discuss possibilities
of conducting a laboratory or online experiment.
 Know your sample size. The bigger the sample size, the better, but it comes at a
cost. Work with stakeholders to determine what you both find to be a meaningful
difference. Consult the experts who can calculate how many participants are
necessary to achieve it and what is the statistically meaningful difference.
 Assess the risks of the intervention. Conduct a risks assessment with
stakeholders and experts to manage risks and potential unintended outcomes. This
may include a null result where no intervention has an effect.
 Be realistic about the timeline and budget. In addition to necessary approvals,
consult the experts on how much time and resources are necessary for your
intervention to have its desired effect (or not). Learn from stakeholders on what is
necessary to generate the desired sample size. Build this into your timeline and
budget.
 Secure legal, ethical and other approvals. Seek necessary approvals required to
carry out the experimental design. If you are working with external experts
understand what is required to obtain their institutions’ approvals to consult on
the project (i.e. institutional review board).
 Be transparent about data sharing and publications. When engaging with
external experts such as those from academic institutions that value novel
research and scientific publications, it is important to be explicit about what data
can be shared and the user-rights of results for external publications.
 Consider options for communicating results, long-term monitoring and
scaling. Outline a game plan on how to move forward after data collection and
analyses, accounting for the possibility of null or negative results. Refer to the
CHANGE section for guidelines.
Ways to know “what works”
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs)

How do you know whether your new strategy works or if other uncontrollable factors are
driving your policy outcome? A randomised controlled trial (RCT) is the ideal way to
solve this dilemma. The key feature of an RCT is the use of a random assignment to
create at least two groups that closely resemble each other. The only difference is that one
group is exposed to the new strategy while the other does not. By comparing identical
groups, chosen at random, an RCT enables you to understand which strategies, if any, are
working, and eliminate pre-existing or external factors that normally complicate the
evaluation process. You may be more familiar with RCTs in medicine where RCTs are
used to compare a new treatment with the current one or a placebo.
Often you may want to determine whether a new policy is more effective in achieving
your measurable policy outcome compared to the status quo. Say you implemented a city-
wide school breakfast programme with the aim of increasing school attendance. The
current policy requires schools to provide free breakfast in the cafeteria before school
starts, but student participation remains low. Your behaviourally informed strategy is to
“make it relevant” by changing the placement and timing. Your new policy is to offer
breakfast in the classroom at the start of the school day.
To test the effectiveness of the new strategy against the existing policy, you identify
300 schools (“sample size”) who already run the school breakfast programme and have
agreed to take part in the pilot. From there, you randomly assign 150 schools to offer
breakfast in the classroom (“the treatment group”) and the other half to the normal
practice of breakfast in the cafeteria (“the control group”) (Figure 1.6).
The beauty of random assignment is that it eliminates uncontrollable pre-existing or
external factors (i.e. improvements in public transportation) that may affect school
attendance because the schools in the treatment group are not systematically different
from those in the control group. At the end of your experiment when you compare school
attendance, the difference between the two groups should only be a result of your
intervention. If you are testing multiple strategies, it is still necessary to include a control
group to know how the new strategies did against the status quo. In the above example,
you can see that four schools saw an increase in school attendance while one school saw a
decrease. How do you know if you are better or worse off under the new policy? The
control group shows us that only two schools saw an improvement while two schools saw
a decline in attendance. So, you can say that the classroom breakfast policy led to an
overall improvement in school attendance compared to the cafeteria breakfast policy. If
the new policy was no better than the current one, you would have seen a similar pattern
in both the treatment and the control groups.
Figure 1.6. Simple randomised controlled trial (RCT) example
Visualisation of an RCT to test the effect of the new school breakfast policy on school attendance
SAMPLE
Randomisation
GROUP 1 GROUP 2
No change in school attendance

Intervention No Intervention
Decrease in school attendance

TREATMENT GROUP CONTROL GROUP
Increase in school attendance
Source: Icons obtained free of copyright from www.thenounproject.com.
Alternative to RCTs
RCTs are the ideal way to determine if your intervention led to your desired policy
outcome but random allocation may not always be logistically, ethically or politically
feasible. In this case, consult a behavioural expert about conducting a quasi-experiment –
an experimental approach that is similar to an RCT, but participants are not randomised
into control and treatment groups (Campbell and Stanley, 2015). You can no longer
eliminate pre-existing or external factors that may influence your outcome but you can
still generate evidence to learn which strategies are more effective. Examples of valuable
quasi-experimental designs include:
 Regression discontinuity (RD): where participants are assigned to treatment and
control groups based on a cut point of an assignment variable. The discontinuity
between the treatment and control trends is then measured.
 Propensity score matching (PSM): where participants in the treatment group are
paired to participants in the control group based on the similarity of their scores to
account for selection bias.
 Difference in differences: where the effect of a treatment or of a policy is

estimated by comparing the pre- and post-treatment differences in the outcome in
the treatment and control group.
Stage 5: CHANGE
Your team has implemented the INTERVENTION and examined the findings – now what?
You want to avoid stopping at the proof-of-practice stage if indeed the findings suggest
that the intervention could have an impact. The fifth and final stage, CHANGE, is the time
for you to look back at your BI exercise and think of its long-term implications.
By this stage, you will know whether the tests have produced promising results and a
behavioural insight can be scaled up into a full policy intervention – or whether repeated
failure brings the project to an end and the community can learn from what did not work.
CHANGE is a crucial decision point for policymakers – at this time, you really have the
decision power to determine which direction to take the project.
The goal of CHANGE is to inform public policies on the basis of the results of the project
and to ensure that society gains the broadest possible value from the insights of the
experiment. BASIC suggests five final considerations on this note:
1. Revisiting the political context and project level. Are the interventions aligned
with the current context such as political, and technological, state of affairs? Are
the results sufficiently promising to motivate policy action, in light of the current
legal landscape? Would the intervention be in line with public opinion or feasible
in the current climate? Are the resources in place to implement the intervention in
the long term?
2. Implementing and scaling behaviourally informed policies. How can you best
implement and scale up your intervention? Should you change a law, regulation
or regulatory regime (OECD, 2016)? Is it possible that the results might fail to
generalise when scaled? Keep in mind that through the implementation and
scaling up of a behaviourally informed policy, certain groups could be more or
less affected than what was suggested by the intervention. This, in turn, may lead
to further iterations and tweaks in the design of the policy in question.
3. Setting up monitoring of long-term and potential side effects. Because most
BI experiments are limited in time span, plan to have specific plans for
monitoring the scaled-up policy in the long term as well as its potential side
effects. This may be done by integrating an ex post evaluation or review of a
given policy as a required step of the policymaking process. In this way,
evaluations or reviews will help ensure the quality of policy over time.
4. Maintaining the policy initiative. While crucial to avoid watering down
behavioural policies, sometimes maintenance of BI interventions may be
neglected. This can happen because BI features may appear as unimportant or
may be in conflict with what seems necessary from a more rational perspective.
Therefore, it is important to have instructions for the proper maintenance –
physical or systemic – of the policy. To avoid problems with maintaining a policy
initiative over time, practitioners should consider what audiences need to be
involved in the maintenance and produce material and instructions that fit these
audiences and the situations in which this material is to be used (Hansen, 2018).
5. Disseminating knowledge widely. While the idea of disseminating results is

common in the behavioural community, it is still not so in most public
institutions. As a result, many early BI projects were not reported at all or only for
internal use. In particular, null results have not been widely publicised leading to
publication bias. Likewise, the lack of standards has led to non-transparent
reporting; reporting without moderators; reporting only in local languages;
overstatement of effects, savings and revenues; and understatement of true costs
(for examples, see OECD, 2017a, and Osman et al., 2018). For this reason, it is
crucial that researchers and practitioners participate, support and systematically
share and report their work in national as well as international networks of both
researchers and policymakers.
Ethical considerations
Applying BI to public policy can raise specific ethical concerns as BI uses data on
individual or group behaviours, as well as experimental methods for testing these theories
at small scales before implementing more broadly. As a result, issues related to privacy,
consent or the ethics of applying certain solutions to only some groups arise.
First, consider some general principles to dispel some misconceptions on the ethics of BI:
 While we are always being behaviourally influenced, this does not exempt
behaviourally informed interventions from ethical evaluation. When applying BI,
you are intentionally trying to intervene to change the behaviour of citizens. This
means citizens will experience influences that they would not otherwise, requiring
an ethical evaluation.
 Public acceptance of BI does not make it always ethically permissible. What is
acceptable is not necessarily what should be acceptable and ethical considerations
should be discussed for each intervention.
 While people may avoid a behavioural intervention in principle, this does not
mean that they can in practice. BI interventions neither force individuals to act a
certain way nor sanction them for not acting a certain way. This does not mean
they are always free to choose how they want and issues related to consent and
awareness needs to be carefully considered since individual are inherently not
ideally rational.
You should then discuss and consider the ethical implications of the intervention.
Before starting a behaviourally informed intervention

Consider establishing an ethical review board from day one. If time and resources do
not allow it, then outline the ethical issues associated with the project, how to address
them and continuously consider where ethical approval may be required. A university
ethical review board may be considered for expert advice and the use of established
ethical approval process can be used.
Appoint ethical supervision of data collection, use and storage. BI often involves data
collection and analysis that goes beyond what is standard in public policymaking.
Consider appointing at least one member – either a member of the ethical review board or
the team working on the behaviourally informed intervention – to supervise ethical
aspects of data collection, use and storage.
Observe existing ethical guidelines and codes of conduct. Make sure all team members
observe ethical guidelines and codes of conduct, which are often already present in public
institutions. Where existing standards are not sufficient for BI, flag these issues and
establish procedures for these instances. Ensure appropriate procedures are in place to
protect whistleblowing and ensure anonymity is respected.
When going through each of the BASIC steps
BEHAVIOUR
Observe the limits of legitimate public policy interventions. Not all behaviours driving
a policy problem fall within the legitimate confines of policymaking. Make sure that you
refrain from targeting and changing behaviours that cannot be defended as being in the
public interest or aligned with government priorities.
Secure acceptance when targeting behaviours. Policymakers suffer biases too, which
can influence the decision to target certain behaviour(s). To avoid these biases, always
evaluate the existing evidence for targeting a given behaviour change.
Beware not to simplify behaviour too much. Behavioural analysis of policy problems
aggregate patterns of groups, yet individuals usually hold distinct preferences.
Distributional impacts may also result in some citizens being influenced differently than
others. Always consider how to minimise potential side effects and protect individual
rights, values and liberties when targeting behaviour change.
ANALYSIS
Behavioural analyses usually observe or study human behaviour close up and often in
their individuals’ everyday environments, running the risk of affecting participants’
personal lives and colliding with people’s privacy.
Seek ethical approvals and competencies where necessary. Use the ethical review
board or relevant authorities within which the behaviour is studied to grant approval. If
using a third party to conduct the study, this ethical responsibility cannot be transferred.
Ensure appropriate training to develop sufficient competencies for data use and analysis.
Consider what guidelines must be followed when studying behaviour up close. These
include collecting and documenting consent, revealing the purpose of the study, ensuring
participants are voluntarily participating and additional safeguards are in place when
studying vulnerable populations.
Only collect data that is necessary and ensure secure handling. Ensure that those
handling the data are properly instructed in the secure collection and handling of data.
STRATEGIES
Some behavioural insights rely on mechanisms that are not fully accessible to
consciousness or under people’s conscious control, while others involve counter-intuitive
and theoretical insights whereby moral intuitions are not well adapted.
To ensure the responsible use of BI in public policy, you should always evaluate the
morality of a policy strategy with regards to transparency and “avoidability”. Transparent
insights are when citizens can identify: i) who is trying to influence them; ii) what this
means; and iii) what purpose is being achieved. Alternatively, behaviours that people
cannot control are referred to as unavoidable, while those that make possible or depend
on conscious control are referred to as avoidable.
When assessing the transparency and “avoidability” of policy intervention, keep in mind
the following considerations:
 Prioritise transparency. Is your intervention clearly communicated, including
being transparent about its purpose and nature?
 Offer a way out. Can citizens avoid the intervention? Does the intervention offer
easy pathways to objections and complaints?
 Ensure the policy intervention serves the public interest. Is it in line with
public sentiments? Does it prevent harm against others?
 Ensure citizens are not being held responsible for consequences that they did
not consciously select. In your context, are they able to fully understand the
implications of their choices? Are they considered legally accountable for these?
INTERVENTION
Be aware that interventions unavoidably intervene in people’s lives. Experiments
intentionally give one group a treatment that is believed to have a positive impact, while
withholding this treatment intentionally from another group. Consider three sources for
help ensuring interventions are carried out ethically: i) ethical codes of conduct;
ii) informed consent; and iii) institutional review boards. These sources may not be
uniformly applicable to all experimental research. You must orient yourself within the
standard ethical guidelines and codes that fit into the special circumstances of the specific
behavioural interventions.
Consider whether legal permission is required and demonstrate the necessity of the
experiment. You should consider if the laws in your country deem experimentation as
legally permissible in public service. It may also be necessary to demonstrate that the
intervention will improve a policy situation, reveal knowledge not currently known,
provide necessary data, be used to inform policy and protect the rights of individuals.
Always consult experience. Make sure that experiments are conducted by people with
experience in experimental design, intervention and reporting to ensure proper protocols
are followed.
Ensure justice, fairness and distributional impacts are considered. You need to
consider and address the potential ethical issues that arise from one group receiving
treatment, and the other not. This may require deploying safety valves for discontinuing
the experiment for ethical reasons or compensating/offsetting groups after the experiment.
Take all measures to protect confidentiality and ensure ethical data analysis. You
should carefully consider using procedures and protocols that ensure the confidentiality of
participants’ responses, e.g. by using randomised response methods or determining not to
collect or connect any data about potential identifiers. Ethical data analysis can be
strengthened by pre-registering studies, over accounting for data outliers and truthfully
reporting on attrition, to strictly follow standards of statistics and their representation.
CHANGE
Adhere to principles of proper stakeholder engagement. Make sure to involve public
bodies, staff, citizens, businesses and other affected parties are properly consulted and the
results of this consultation are clearly communicated.
Follow principles of transparency and accountability. Results of experiments and
consultations should be shared with executive and legislative branches, as well as with
broader society. This includes ensuring proper credit is given to the policymakers and
government agencies who ran the experiments.
Report on what works and what does not. Other policymakers, society and the research
community should learn from your efforts. This includes reporting on null results and
unexpected effects to avoid exposing citizens to interventions that have already been
shown to fail.
Monitor long‑term and side effects. In implementing behaviourally informed
interventions, you also have the responsibility for developing plans for monitoring the
effects of the interventions to protect citizens from the potential negative consequences.
Conclusions
What are the ingredients of good behavioural public policies? When and how should BI
be applied to policymaking? Can we use our knowledge of how people think and make
decisions to create more effective interventions? The BASIC Guidebook addresses these
fundamental questions and provides a starting point to learn about the process of
incorporating BI into policymaking.
The guide offers an introductory look at how to identify, scope and address the
behavioural aspects of a policy problem and emphasises the importance of applying BI
from the beginning to the end of the policy cycle. It aims to show how a nuanced
understanding of human behaviour can provide new tools for policymakers. Introducing
subtle changes to choice of architecture, factoring in people’s social preferences, working
to facilitate people’s decision-making, can all be powerful drivers of behaviour change.
This introductory guide provides a tool for incorporating these insights when designing
and implementing public policies, by overviewing the basic steps and best practices of
behavioural insights. Once you have gained an initial understanding of these through the
guide, we recommend referring to the BASIC Manual for a more detailed and
comprehensive depiction of the BI approach, that will allow you to fully grasp the
rationale and mechanisms of the BASIC framework.
Notes
1
Behaviour, Analysis, Strategic, Intervention and Change are the five stages of the BASIC process
for applying behavioural insights to public policy.
2
In the BASIC manual, the core stages of BASIC are referred to in small caps (i.e. “BEHAVIOUR”)
to distinguish the stage from the regular use of the word (i.e. in BEHAVIOUR you diagnose the
behaviour problems).
3
Italics in guiding questions in this section refer to behavioural strategies developed in Stage 3.
References
Campbell, D.T. and J.C. Stanley (2015). Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research.
Ravenio Books.
Chetty, R., A. Looney and K. Kroft (2009), “Salience and taxation: Theory and evidence”, American
Economic Review, Vol. 99(4), pp. 1145-77.
Dallas, S.K., P.J. Liu and P.A. Ubel (2019), “Don’t count calorie labelling out: Calorie counts on the Left
side of menu items lead to lower calorie food choices”, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 29(1),
pp. 60-69.
Doran, G.T. (1981), “There’s a SMART way to write management’s goals and objectives”, Management
Review, Vol. 70(11), pp. 35-36.
European Commission (2014), “Taking consumer rights into the digital age: over 507 million citizens
will benefit as of today”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-655_en.htm
(accessed on 07 November 2018).
Gibbons, S. (2018), Journey Mapping 101, Nielsen Norman Group,
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-101/.
Gifford, R. et al. (2009), “Temporal pessimism and spatial optimism in environmental assessments: An
18-nation study”, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 29, pp. 1–12.
Hallsworth, M. et al. (2015), “Stating appointment costs in SMS reminders reduces missed hospital
appointments: findings from two randomised controlled trials”, PLOS One, Vol. 10(9),
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137306.
Hertwig, R. (2017), “When to consider boosting: Some rules for policy-makers”, Behavioural Public
Policy, Vol. 1(2), pp. 143-161.
ideas42 (2018), Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes Preventing Failures to
Appear in Court, https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/store/9c86b123e3b00a5da58318f438a6e
787dd01d66d0efad54d66aa232a6473/I42-954_NYCSummonsPaper_Final_Mar2018.pdf.
ideas42 (2017), Define, Diagnose, Design, Test, http://www.ideas42.org/blog/first-step-towards-solution-
beta-project/ (accessed on 06 November 2018).
IRS (2017), Behavioral Insights Toolkit, US Internal Revenue Service, https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
soi/17rpirsbehavioralinsights.pdf.
Johnson, E.J. and D.G. Goldstein (2004), “Defaults and donation decisions”, Transplantation,
Vol. 78(12), pp. 1713–6.
Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Macmillan.
Lo, A.W. (2013), “Fear, greed, and financial crises: A cognitive neurosciences perspective”, in
Handbook of Systemic Risk, Cambridge University Press.
Ng, C.F. (2016), “Behavioural mapping and tracking”, Research Methods for Environmental Psychology,
Vol. 29.
OECD (2017a), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World, OECD
Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264270480-en.
OECD (2017b), Obesity Update 2017, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://www.oecd.org/health/health-
systems/Obesity-Update-2017.pdf
OECD (2016), Protecting Consumers through Behavioural Insights: Regulating the Communications
Market in Colombia, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255463-en.
OECD/OPSI (n.d.), Practical Service Blueprinting – The Guide, Practical Service Design, OECD
Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, https://oecd-opsi.org/toolkits/practical-service-
blueprinting-the-guide/.
Osman, M. et al. (2018), “Learning lessons: How to practice nudging around the world”, Journal of Risk
Research, pp. 1-9, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2018.1517127.
Sunstein, C.R. (2003), “Terrorism and probability neglect”, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty,
Vol. 26(283), pp. 121-136.
Svenson, O. (1981), “Are we all less risky and more skilful than our fellow drivers?”, Acta Psychologica,
Vol. 47(2), pp. 143-148, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(81)90005-6.
Thaler, R.H. and S. Benartzi (2004), “Save more tomorrow: Using behavioral economics to increase
employee saving”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 112(1), University of Chicago.
Thaler, R.H. and C.R. Sunstein (2009), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and
Happiness, Penguin Books, New York.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2014), EAST Four Simple Ways to Apply Behavioural Insights, The
Behavioural Insights Team, https://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/BIT-Publication-EAST_FA_WEB.pdf.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2013), Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised
Controlled Trials, The Behavioural Insights Team, https://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-
wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TLA-1906126.pdf.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2010), MINDSPACE, The Behavioural Insights Team,
https://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/publications/mindspace/ (accessed on 11 April 2019).
Wilcox, K. et al. (2009), “Vicarious goal fulfilment: When the mere presence of a healthy option leads to
an ironically indulgent decision”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 36(3), pp. 380-393.
World Bank (2015), The World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behaviour, World
Bank, Washington, DC, http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/worldbank/publications/wdr/wdr%20
2015/wdr-2015-full-report.pdf.
World Obesity Federation (2015), About Obesity, World Obesity Federation, England and Wales.
2. THE BASIC MANUAL │ 43
Chapter 2. The BASIC Manual
This part provides a detailed how-to manual for policy officials and practitioners
working with public agencies on applying behavioural insights to public policy, as well
as a repository of approaches, proof of concepts and methodological standards for
designing and implementing a behaviourally informed policy intervention.
44 │ 2. THE BASIC MANUAL
BASIC – A toolkit and ethical guidelines for applying BI in public policy
During the last 10 years, Behavioural Insights (BI) has become increasingly established in
public policy, as well as in society more broadly. It was originally created by the UK
Behavioural Insights Team (UKBIT) to refer to an evidence-based approach to
integrating insights and methodologies from the behavioural sciences in public policy to
provide better and more effective regulation (Halpern, 2015). As this approach spread
wider into public policy circles, the resulting initiatives and outcomes are increasingly
referred to as “behaviourally informed public policy”, or just “behavioural public policy”
(BPP). This approach to the development, implementation and evaluation of public policy
has been granted its own academic journals, associations, cross-institutional networks and
an ever-increasing number of institutions and teams co-ordinating and/or integrating BI
into public policy around the world.
The core tenet of BI is the application of insights and methodologies from the behavioural
sciences in public policy development and delivery. To be more precise, these insights are
mainly taken from behavioural economics, cognitive and social psychology and the study
of judgment and decision-making. Insights are also taken from similar disciplines sharing
not only the inductive but also the causal explanatory and experimental approach to the
subject matter of human behaviour as well as dual process, and similar theories of human
cognition (see Box 2.1). The aspiration is to better understand why people act as they do
to create more effective public policies by taking into account how the limits and biases
of human attention, belief formation, choice and determination, as uncovered by these
sciences, influence people’s behaviour.
Box 2.1. What are “Behavioural Insights”
Behavioural Insights (BI) constitute the evidence-based approach to integrating insights and
methodologies from the behavioural sciences in public policy to provide better and more effective
public policies; behavioural insights (written in lower case), on the other hand, refer to the specific
insights and methodologies from the behavioural sciences. In particular, this latter concept of
behavioural insights refers to a series of theories and empirical findings originating in the
behavioural sciences regarding what shapes real-world human behaviour in predictable ways,
including the methodologies for how to approach this subject matter.
While there is no universal definition of behavioural science (see paragraph below), this toolkit
takes the concept primarily to refer to behavioural economics, cognitive and social psychology, the
study of judgment and decision-making, and similar disciplines sharing not only the inductive but
also the causal explanatory and experimental approach to the subject matter of human behaviour as
well as dual process theories of human cognition. Consequently, the behavioural insights around
which BI revolves go beyond the insights provided by the academic discipline of behavioural
economics. While the latter studies the effects of psychological, social, cognitive and emotional
factors on economic decisions of individuals and institutions, BI covers a wider domain than
economic decision-making and thus includes a wider set of behavioural insights than those
relevant for that field.
What exactly constitutes “the behavioural sciences” is up for debate. Some prefer to define the
behavioural sciences very broadly so as to accommodate almost any approach that relates to
human behaviour, others prefer to define the term more narrowly so as to ensure at least some
level of theoretical and methodological consistency. This manual presents an approach that falls in
the latter category. Either way, it is important to emphasise that the behavioural sciences do not, by
themselves, constitute a unified field but rather feature a plurality of sciences that do not readily
lend itself for policymakers and practitioners to tap into. Rather, BI tends to draw on a particular
branch of psychological theories especially those compatible with experimental methodologies
(Lepenies and Małecka, 2019).
Source: Lepenies, R. and M. Małecka (2019), “The ethics of behavioural public policy”, in A. Lever and
A. Paoma, The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy, Routledge, New York.
Thus, BI stands in contrast to more traditional policy paradigms, which have tended to
rely on more abstract models and ideal assumptions about human behaviour, models that
do not factor in such limits and biases. Instead, traditional approaches have usually
assumed that people’s behaviour could be understood as if resulting from fully rational
and deliberative thinking based on being provided full information and absent of
constraints on time and attention. Consequently, at least according to critics, traditional
policies easily end up being naive and ineffective as they reflect assumed rather than
actual behaviours. BI, in contrast, claims to provide more realistic models and
assumptions about the psychological factors that shape human behaviour, tools for how to
influence such behaviour and methods for how to investigate and measure actual
behaviour and behaviour change. However, as BI and BPP are experiencing increasing
public attention, it is becoming more and more evident that policymakers and
practitioners working with policymakers have a hard time orienting themselves critically
within this fast-evolving scientifically based paradigm. This is especially true when it
comes to:
 grasping the basics of the scientific theories and concepts from the behavioural
sciences
 learning the processes and tools involved when integrating BI in public policy
 understanding the scientific methodologies that are applied in validating and
testing behavioural public policies
 having sound ethical guidance when working responsibly within this paradigm.
To help policymakers and practitioners orient themselves, BASIC provides a process-
oriented framework for integrating insights, theories and methods from the behavioural
sciences when designing and implementing public policies. To a large extent, the current
practices, proof of concepts and methodological standards related to behaviourally
informed public policymaking have already been described in various reports and
frameworks (see Box 2.1). However, a full process framework equipping practitioners
with best practice tools, methods and ethical guidance for conducting BI projects from the
beginning to the end of a public policy cycle was missing (OECD, 2017). BASIC intends
to fill this gap.
The aim of BASIC (Figure 2.1) is to provide the basics for orienting oneself within the
world of BI and provide a framework for how to apply BI to public policy through a
five-stage process that runs from the beginning to the end of the policy cycle (Figure 2.2).
Figure 2.1. The BASIC framework
BBehaviour
EHAVIOUR AAnalysis
NALYSIS STRATEGIES
Solution INTERVENTION CHANGE
Project level Proto-test of

Policy intervention
Revisit the policy context
Strategic
Prototype of Proto-type of
Behavioural intervention exp. design
Behavioural
reduction
Proto-test of
experimental
design
Ethical screening
Cost assessment
Priority implement
Feasibility &
filter
EXPERIMENT scale
Flowcharts sample
Conceptualising Target
behaviours behaviour %
Monitor
Who What
Long term
control treatment effects & side effects
When Non-preferred
behaviour %
Maintain & Develop
measurement Disseminate knowledge

Selection filter and Behavioural insights
Figure 2.2. The policy cycle
Enforcement Agenda - setting
Ex post Ex ante
evaluation appraisal
BI rarely applied
Final impact
Monitoring
assessment
Monitoring Drafting of the rule
Transposition and
implementation
BI mostly applied
Implementation
Source: OECD (2017), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264270480-en.
The process aspect of BASIC is important to emphasise. The OECD (2017) case study
collection shows the results of a survey of over 150 cases applying BI to public policy,
the majority of which have been towards the end of the policy cycle, i.e. at the stages of
implementation and enforcement/compliance. This supports a widespread perception that
BI enters only after the policy issue has been identified and analysed. It is taken to do so
by suggesting behavioural tweaks and strategies, such as providing more salient
information or providing users with the “right” default option to promote certain
behaviours or even behavioural change. In addition to this, the case-collection also
reflects how BI, methodologically speaking, is mainly about experimentation and trialling
in the evaluation of policy outcomes.
The perception of BI as entering at the end of the policy cycle may indeed be partially
self-inflicted by BI practitioners. Celebrating the ten-year anniversary of UKBIT,
Sanders, Snijders and Hallsworth (2018) notes this perception in the continuation of
UKBIT’s strategic focus on quick wins and return on costs, and warns of the danger that
“behavioural science is seen to offer merely technocratic tweaks” (i.e. letters, emails, text
messages) and as focusing primarily on results (i.e. the notorious abundance of bar graphs
in BI publications) rather than a more systemic change to the policymaking process.
However, a deeper look at the BI approach and its theoretical underpinnings demonstrate
clearly that BI has a lot to offer in the ex ante appraisal as well as the ex post evaluation
stages of the policy cycle (OECD, 2017; 2018). Indeed, it may be argued that since BI
cannot be effectively applied without understanding how (mechanisms) and under what
circumstances (boundary conditions) their application may be expected to cause
behaviour change (Marchionni and Reijula, 2019); the responsible application of BI to
public policy requires a significant amount of time and effort placed in the early stages of
the policy cycle. Moreover, behaviourally informed policies are not really evidence-based
unless they involve “mechanistic” and “circumstantial” evidence (Grüne-Yanoff, 2016).
This means that evidence gained through testing and experimentation should be used at
both the ex post and ex ante stages of the policymaking process to systematically
understand what behaviours may be driving policy problems and scale “what works”
from the beginning of the project.
It should thus not be overlooked that the more effective use of BI in the policy cycle
depends on a close and systematic integration of ex ante evaluation and ex post evidence.
Tackling “wicked problems” and contributing to a more systematic approach to
policymaking changes in the public administration requires BI to be applied coherently
throughout the policy cycle to better understand and identify relevant behaviours, conduct
better analyses, design better policy strategies and test policy interventions to drive
change improving policy efforts. The five stages of BASIC attempts to accommodate a
framework for doing this.
The 5 stages of BASIC

The five stages of BASIC seeks to guide the application of BI to a given policy issue in a
problem-oriented way:
1. Behaviour, deals with the initial stage of applying BI at the beginning of the
policy cycle so as to identify and target crucial behavioural aspects of policy
problems versus issues stemming from lack of information, incentives or standard
regulation.
2. Analysis, deals with scrutinising the target behaviours as viewed through the lens
of theories, insights and methodologies from the behavioural sciences.
3. Strategies, provides guidelines for the practitioner to systematically identify and
conceptualise behaviourally informed strategies based on the behavioural analyses
that result from the combination of Stages 1 and 2.
4. Intervention, comprises core methods for systematically designing experiments
for evaluating the efficacy as well as the efficiency of behavioural interventions.
5. Change, provides practitioners with tools for: i) checking whether the initial
assumptions and contextual factors have evolved before rolling out a BI-informed
intervention; and ii) producing plans for implementation, scale, monitoring,
evaluation, maintenance and dissemination of applications.
How to use BASIC

BASIC is a framework built “by practitioners, for practitioners”. It is partly a synthesis of
existing approaches, frameworks, tools and guidelines already widely used implicitly by
BI practitioners. It also builds partly on tools which have been specially developed by
iNudgeyou – The Applied Behavioural Science Group during a decade of work with
applying BI to public policy around the world.
The ordering of tools and guidelines in a framework helps to highlight the way in which
BI can be used throughout the policy cycle, a component often missing in the BI
literature. These tools stress the interdependency between the various stages of the policy
cycle: from how the behavioural reduction of a policy issue directs what behaviours to
focus on, to how the analysis of such behaviours then influences the choice of
behavioural strategies to be tested. These tests then should be designed to provide the
proper basis for behaviourally informed policy initiatives.
In addition, BASIC also highlights a series of ethical considerations for each stage, which
need to be addressed as the practitioner works through the framework. These include
considering whether possible behaviour changes are actually aligned with the interest of
citizens, over giving consideration to the appropriateness of certain behavioural strategies
relative to the problems addressed to securing privacy and equal treatment of citizens
when designing field tests.
Finally, while BASIC provides policymakers and practitioners working with them a step-
by-step framework for working through a policy problem with a behaviourally informed
approach, it is important to observe at least the following three caveats:
 Context matters throughout the five stages: BASIC provides a step-by-step
approach. However, it should not be applied without continually paying
consideration to the political, institutional and policy context throughout all of its
stages of application. As for all other frameworks, the policymaker and
practitioner working with policymakers will encounter cases where he or she will
have to adapt and supplement BASIC with other resources to address the special
features of the policy issue addressed.
 Not all policy problems call for a behaviourally informed approach: BASIC
includes a process to scope the policy problem and identify those driven by
psychological limitations and biases. It argues that these are problems which are
first and foremost amenable to behaviourally informed approaches. Other policy
issues, such as systemic issues (e.g. financial or physical constraints) will benefit
more from alternative approaches.
 Not all applications will progress through every tool and step of BASIC. Nor
should all applications progress meticulously through each and every tool or step
of BASIC. In some cases, the initial policy project rules out a behavioural
problem only to realise partway through that behavioural expertise is necessary.
In other cases, field experimentation may be difficult or impossible to execute.
Additionally, the nature of behavioural problems itself may make certain tools or
steps irrelevant.1
Scoping a BI project: What to do first?

Applying BI will always be constrained by resources in terms of time, money or
institutional leverage, which is often a challenge for BI practitioners who are outside the
policymaking process. Working with BI also poses some special challenges and
requirements to practitioners only familiar with public policy, which may tax resources
and relations, if not planned for. Thus, it is crucial for whoever is applying BI to public
policy either from within or from outside government to consider the potential scope and
level of a BI project even before beginning to work on the policy issue. Equally important
is to take into consideration those contextual issues – political, institutional and policy
related – that need to be factored in before starting up a project involving BI.
Setting up a team, group or network

BI uses an empirical approach that differs from traditional policy interventions. In
particular, it makes use of a range of methodologies that might be unfamiliar to traditional
policy specialists, including, amongst others, extensive data analysis, observational
studies, laboratory experiments, field-testing of prototypes and extensive randomised
controlled trials, creating a new set of challenges.
Some of these challenges may be addressed or mitigated by identifying, in advance, the
kinds of problems and requirements a given BI project is likely to stir up as well as
specific human resources needed to deal with these. In this way, the practitioner will be in
a better position to manage cross-institutional expectations in relation to the project,
identify what tools may realistically be applied and consider what human resources to
involve at various stages of the project. The important takeaway is that the practitioner
should devote time and thought into negotiating expectations to address challenges
specific to BI applications before they become problems.
The first and perhaps most important thing to notice in this relation is that whether
centralised or decentralised, whether public or private, whether permanent or project-
based, the success of the BI approach usually involves assembling some sort of
permanent or temporary team, group or network. To this end, there is a set of features
characterising the success of getting BI projects successfully off the ground and have
them make meaningful contributions. These characteristics are:
1. Experienced resources: A team, group or network will significantly benefit from
including and/or involving some experienced people who have first-hand
experience with public policy and administration as well as behavioural science,
including actual experience with running real-world experiments. Such expertise
will allow the team, group or network to avoid repeating the same generic
mistakes and problems that tend to arise in BI projects in public policy.
2. Diverse expertise: A team, group or network will need to encompass or be able
to draw upon a variety of specialised expertise, including intimate knowledge of
policy processes and standard policy instruments, applied BI, cognitive and social
psychology, behavioural economics, experimental design and statistics. Thus,
involving a critical mass of four to six practitioners with diverse educational
backgrounds is usually needed. In some cases, institutional constraints may only
allow for a team, group or network that also relies on neighbouring disciplines.
While this may strengthen the work, one should also be wary of the weaknesses
that may result from differing, or even inconsistent, ontologies and
methodologies.
3. Mindset, social skills and diversity: As applying BI often requires practitioners
to work extensively in the field and be willing to negotiate key aspects of their
work, a special mindset, extensive social skills and diversity are crucial.
Practitioners should be clear that developing, designing and delivering public
policy is not a desk job, but involves working closely and respectfully together
with, and as part of, front-line public service as well as with policy practitioners
higher up the hierarchy and collaborators outside the public sector. As a team,
group or network will also work across a variety of educational and social
backgrounds to serve citizens living their lives outside the public sector, it is
crucial that it is diverse on this account and includes people with actual real-work
experience, inside as well as outside the public sector.
4. Advisory board, network participation and collaboration: As BI is a steadily
evolving and international field that involves high levels of domain-specific as
well as cross-disciplinary knowledge, it is highly recommended that the team,
group or network establish an advisory body, if possible. This may involve
government officials, academics and experts and be used to provide support,
insights and direction. Also, it is crucial that the team, group or network orients
itself and actively participates in national as well as international knowledge-
sharing networks and events. Finally, the team, group or network should perceive
itself as neither necessary nor sufficient, when carrying out projects. Instead, it
should welcome heavy involvement and collaboration with external partners and
stakeholders, and always remember to pay credits and honours where they are
due.
5. Secure a two- to three-year commitment: Applying BI is an empirical effort. It
takes time to conduct proper behavioural analysis of the behavioural issues
underlying policy problems, develop strategies, design, set up and run
experiments, as well as implement on a larger scale. In addition, the inductive
process involved is inherently fallible and thus calls for a sense of psychological
security that allows for failed experiments and protects the team, group or
network from external pressure to take short cuts. For that reason, a team, group
or network should ideally try to secure a two- to three-year commitment that
allows it to develop the necessary infrastructure and cross-institutional network,
identify issues to work on, and develop, design and deliver advice on behavioural
strategies for public policy.
Exploring the political, institutional and policy context

Equally important is to take into consideration those contextual issues – political-,
institutional- and policy-related – that need to be factored in before designing and
implementing any policy intervention. This includes considerations related to:
 Political leadership: Are political leaders aware of the use of BI and have they
been briefed on what BI can or cannot do?
 Institutional setup: Where do the expected policy interventions fit within the
administrative and government structure? Have the relevant institutions been
mapped? Have opportunities and needs for co-ordination been considered and
planned?
 Policy space: What are the connections with existing policies and interventions?
Are there potential gaps and overlaps? If so, how can they be addressed?
Determining the policy level of the project

Third, a crucial question to ask from the outset is “at what policy level is the project
anchored?” Not only does this define its scope, resources and constraints, it also helps
clarify potential positive and negative features that will influence the project.
A way of approaching this question is by identifying at which of the following
three levels a given BI project is anchored (see Table 2.1). Determining the level of the
project will help the practitioner to identify in advance some crucial features, positive and
negative, which will tend to shape the project. This will allow for developing suitable
strategies and precautionary measures, relative to the necessary management of
expectations and resources amongst all parties involved. In addition, the scoping of the
problem and type of intervention also helps identify the level of maturity in the use and
application of BI.
Table 2.1. Thinking aid: Considering the level of the project
Goal Visual aid Decision-making tool

Scoping the project based on the Use consideration points to define the
policy level of the project and the various levels of the project from high-
special characteristics of BI. level institutional, down to strategic and
behavioural levels and manage
expectations relative to the BI project.
Level of the project Expectation for the project

Institutional-level projects aim to apply BI to a wider Explore the ‘institutional fit’ of BI, so to speak, by: i) providing
institutionalised domain to provide an understanding of how knowledge about the institutional potential and relevant
this approach may help to transform public policy processes and methods involved when working with BI;
development and/or delivery. ii) carrying out interventions that may serve as proof-of-
concept; and iii) identifying the possible institutional
obstacles that working with BI presents to the particular
institution and its domain.
Strategic-level projects aim to apply BI to one or more Deliver viable and effective policy insights and solutions
issues from a defined list of existing policy problems that which are cost-effective compared to alternative policy
challenge a particular institutional domain or sector. measures by: i) extending existing knowledge about BI and
building capacity for this within the institution; ii) applying the
lessons learned from former institutional projects to strategic
level problems to test for their robustness; and iii) providing
scalable long-term solutions to one or more existing policy
issues.
Behavioural-level projects aim to apply BI directly to a Policymakers, stakeholders and collaborators usually
specific behavioural problem in the institutional domain or assume that the tools and methods for applying BI in public
sector. policy design and delivery are more or less fully developed.
Thus, behavioural level projects are expected to fully
integrate into the everyday decisions and processes of
institutional work. The success criteria of projects at this level
will usually be: i) Smooth integration of process; ii) “problem
solved”, not “lesson learned”; and iii) easily communicable
results.
In addition to identifying the project level, the practitioner should also facilitate a
discussion on the scope of the project to manage and make expectations transparent from
the beginning and identify the potential point of entry in the policy cycle where this
intervention should occur.
Checklist for scoping a BI project

To avoid unpleasant surprises, the practitioner may sit down with everyone involved in
the project and clearly communicate the special features that a BI project may come to
involve dependent on the level of the project. Table 2.2 contains some discussion points
that practitioners may address within their team to consider whether or not BI is
appropriate for the project. The discussion points can also be used to communicate with
stakeholders on what to expect when getting involved in the policy initiative under
consideration.
Table 2.2. BI project scoping checklist
Run through the following points with your team to scope the problem and communicate with stakeholders
Completion check Discussion point

BI does not apply to all problems. Given the surge in interest in BI, policymakers may have
unrealistically high expectations about its potential. However, BI cannot be applied to any kind of
policy issue and it is rarely, if ever, able to solve behavioural problems completely and on its own.
BI is not about raising “general public awareness”. In public policy raising “general public
awareness” is often implicitly seen as the main road to influencing behaviour. BI, on the other hand,
usually focuses on generating measurable changes in concrete behaviours, without necessarily
resulting in measurable changes in general perceptions.
Developing BI is not necessarily “cheap”. While applying the results from BI may be cost-effective,
the development of these is not necessarily cheap. Groundwork needs to be carried out before
coming up with ideas for what strategies to test.
Applying BI requires expertise. It is common to think that anyone can be an intuitive expert on
behaviour, but that in itself is bias since behavioural insights are often counterintuitive. The
practitioner should clarify what expertise is present in the project and why as well as what working
with applied BI means and how such projects tend to draw on the present expertise throughout a
project.
Be critical of existing data and perceptions. Establish a critical, though not sceptical, attitude
towards existing data and perceptions from the outset as a norm to guide the work of the team.
Existing material will often have been produced using standard methodologies, which do not
necessarily align with the theoretical underpinnings of BI and may thus potentially misguide its
application.
Secure permissions and agree on due credits from the outset. Try to secure that the team is
granted permission to oversee all stages of the project as well as receive due credits. Also, secure
the team shared user rights of results so that these are publicly available for scientific publication,
public dissemination and journalists – this should, of course, also include null and negative results.
Ethical guidelines for applying BI

Applying BI to public policy raises particular ethical concerns. This is because BI
approaches public policymaking on different terms than traditional public policy.
Traditional public policy operates often within a formalised legislative paradigm. Citizens
as well as policymakers are assumed to self-consciously attend to what is most important,
adhere to the rules of rationality and stick to their choices and promises. The BI approach,
on the other hand, assumes citizens as well as policymakers to be less perfect. The
psychological theories underpinning the approach assumes people’s attention to be
scarce, the processes involved in their belief formation and choices to be biased, and their
determination to be continuously challenged. As BI approaches to policymaking use
different methods and means for influencing behaviour change, BI needs to conceive of
ethically relevant concepts such as autonomy, consent and responsibility differently. This
calls for special ethical considerations and guidelines to complement those already in
place for more traditional policymaking. For this purpose, BASIC includes ethical
guidelines to consider at every step.
These guidelines are intentionally both practical and aspirational – while some
guidelines may not be implementable in every setting, they are intended to give the
policymaker high standards to consider throughout a BI project.
Before starting the project

As ethics should be considered upfront, below are a set of ethical guidelines that should
be considered before beginning a BI project.
Consider establishing an ethical review board. Ethics is an issue to be observed from

the outset of BASIC. Obtaining a democratic mandate to devise public policy is not a
mandate to pursue this in any way one likes. Ethics has priority. Thus, as a first step
consider the possibility of establishing an ethical review board to follow the team, group
or network from day one. If this is too ambitious for the project at hand, then outline the
ethical issues associated with a project, how the project proposes to address these and
continuously consider where ethical approval is required. Potentially, the BI team, group
or network may also consider contacting an ethical review board at a university to get
established third-party expert advice on particular issues. Following established ethical
review processes could also be an option.
Appoint an ethics supervisor for data collection, use and storage. BI often involves
data collection and analysis that goes beyond what is standard in traditional public
policymaking. This includes: i) primary behavioural data (i.e. data on or related to the
real-world behaviour of citizens); ii) secondary behavioural data (i.e. data on variables
related to people’s attention, belief formation, preference construction, determination and
more); iii) contextual data (i.e. data on contextual variables, including seemingly
irrelevant aspects of choice architectures); and iv) data on people’s reflective preferences
(insofar as such exist) about what people believe they ought to do given their available
options. Consider appointing at least one member – either a member of the ethical review
board or the BI team – to supervise ethical aspects of data collection, use and storage.
Observe existing ethical guidelines and codes of conduct. BI is characterised by
working across institutional boundaries. Make sure all team-members observe existing
ethical guidelines and codes of conduct of the particular fields that the project involves as
well as receive the necessary training to comply with these. Also, existing ethical
guidelines and codes of conduct will not cover all aspects of a BI project. Establish a
procedure from the outset for flagging activities and data collection that are not covered
by these, and for how to perform an ethical review in such cases. Finally, the team, group
or network should discuss and establish procedures for how it handles collaborating
parties that fail to comply with those parties’ own ethical guidelines and codes of
conduct, while also observing that honesty, anonymity and whistleblowing is protected.
Note
1
Still, practitioners cannot just skip considering the stages of BASIC as a behaviourally informed approach to
public policy development and delivery. A policymaker should at least consider the implications of each and
every stage for the given piece of policy. Take, for instance, the situation where a practitioner considers just
copying a behaviourally informed policy from another country or designing a policy on the basis of
behavioural insights. Even in these situations, the practitioner should consider whether the original
behavioural analysis and strategies would fit the new context, the extent to which an intervention needs to be
tested under the new conditions and how to scale the change for the policy issue at hand.
Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR – Identifying and defining the problem
Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR
Under ideal circumstances, BI expertise is involved from the beginning of a policy effort.
If this is the case, BEHAVIOUR1 refers to the initial stage in such an effort, where
policymakers and practitioners working with them may follow four steps that apply
thinking aids and decision-making tools aligned with BI to:
1. Decompose a policy problem into its behavioural components.
2. Prioritise what behaviours to assess as potential targets for a BI project.
3. Define potential target behaviours in terms of decision points and processes.
4. Select those behaviours exhibiting the best potential for a BI approach.
When
This stage is relevant when the BI team is part of the policy effort from the outset and is
regarded as such. If the team is brought in superficially or is in need of “quick wins”, the
tools in BEHAVIOUR might be too cumbersome to apply.
Milestone
The end of BEHAVIOUR provides a first milestone aimed at identifying what behaviour(s)
to target. When arriving at this milestone, the team may consider bringing stakeholders
together to ensure continued buy-in and support. Further, the team may also consider
bringing additional stakeholders into the project based on their relevancy relative to the
identified target behaviour(s).
The case-collection Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the
World (OECD, 2017) observes that BI has largely been applied to areas in policy
implementation and enforcement/compliance at the end of the policy cycle. It also notes
the potential for BI to be applied to earlier stages and there are signs this already
happening in many places. However, few tools and guidelines exist for how to integrate
BI at these early stages. In particular, there is a lack of knowledge about how BI
translates policy challenges into behavioural problems, as well as what thinking-aids and
decision-making tools can be used to effectively evaluate when to apply BI instead of
other available policy instruments.
The stage of BEHAVIOUR does this by focusing on a series of descriptive tools. That is, it
is not aimed at explaining behaviour (Stage 2: ANALYSIS) or identifying strategies for
behaviour change (Stage 3: STRATEGIES). The aim is simply to identify, prioritise, define
and select those behaviours contained within a wider policy effort that are particularly
suitable for a BI approach. This stage is a fundamental one but still often overlooked
when planning a policy intervention (be it behavioural or more traditional) for dealing
with a given policy problem. Finally, BEHAVIOUR also involves a series of ethical
considerations that researchers and practitioners working with BI should consider relative
to this stage, which follows the five tools.
Tool #1: Behavioural reduction: Decomposing policy issues into behaviours

1. Identifying constituent behaviours Conduct a behavioural reduction to
within wider policy issues to which decompose policy problems, first into
behavioural insights might potentially strategic domains and then into their
be applied. constituent behaviours.
Whether speaking of big reforms or operational tinkering, public policy development and
delivery is ideally driven by planned efforts. BI is well suited to this ideal as it aims to
deliver slow incremental, evidence-based and “gentle” (i.e. not purely “command and
control”) regulation. Still, while befitting the mentality of planned efforts, the empirical
drive of BI means that it works on the operational levels of public policy development
and delivery, not on the broader level of policy strategies and big agendas.
This creates the obvious challenge: how can high-level policy planning be connected with
the operational-level design and delivery of policy? On the one hand, at the early stages
of the policy cycle, issues are usually formulated too vaguely and broadly for identifying
what concrete behaviour changes to target at the operational level to effectively help
resolve the policy issue (Soman, 2015). On the other hand, policymakers and practitioners
working at the operational level will often find it difficult to assess whether the
behaviours targeted are actually the most pertinent ones for addressing the larger policy
issue at stake.
A “behavioural reduction” (see Figure 2.3 and Box 2.2) can help bridge the gap between
the policy and the operational levels. It is a simple tool whereby the practitioner
constructs a hierarchical branching tree model to map how a general policy issue connects
to concrete behaviours. In its most simple form, the reduction is carried out in three steps
that aim to decompose the policy problem into its many behavioural components. In this
way, the behavioural reduction helps practitioners to identify the concrete behaviours tied
to the policy problem and to which BI may be applied. This should be as concrete as
possible (see also Tool #3 below).
Figure 2.3. Simplified sample behavioural reduction structure from a larger organisation
applying BI to health at work
Health at work
Sedentary Foraging Sleeping Snacking

behaviour behaviour behaviour behaviour
Sitting at Sitting in Healthy Coffee/tea Interruptions At bed Snacking at Unhealthy

meetings Sitting at transportation lunch vs. sleep vs. 10 pm workstation Unhealthy snacking
Breakfast Alcohol &
vs. vs. vs. cocoa at uninterrupted vs. later vs. not snacking at vs. healthy
workstation at work coffee
standing active road unhealthy hot drinks sleep consumption in meetings snacking at
vs. vs.
to work lunch vending vs. healthy conferences
standing skipping the evening
machine snacking
this vs. not
Box 2.2. How to conduct a behavioural reduction in practice
The policymaker and practitioner can conduct a behavioural reduction by following this
process:
1. Plot the general policy area or challenge at the top of a whiteboard.
Practitioners often use whiteboards to think through behavioural problems in a
group setting, if you have one then put this at the top. This is referred to as the
“policy level” of the behavioural reduction.
2. Connect the relevant strategic domains within which the policy issue arises.
This level is referred to as the “strategic level” of the behavioural reduction.
3. Attach each of the strategic domains into the concrete behaviours. The items
at this level of the reduction should be concrete decisions, behaviours and
procedures. Hence, this level of the behavioural reduction is also referred to as the
“behavioural level” (for illustration, see Figure 2.2).
The concept of a “behavioural reduction” is not as strange as it might seem at first. It very
much echoes a standard brainstorming session and may even be conducted as such using
a whiteboard (though thinking in groups may have its own series of problems). To this
end, assemble stakeholders and conduct a brainstorming process under a heading (policy
effort or challenge), with the aim of generating a vast set of concrete examples of relevant
behaviours (concrete behaviours) and ultimately sorting them into relevant categories
(strategic domains). Finally, order them in the hierarchy described above – you now have
a behavioural reduction.
Tool #2: Prioritising potential target behaviours using priority filters

2. Evaluating and prioritising Apply a priority filter to prioritise which
behaviours relative to how suitable of these behaviours are behavioural
they are for a BI approach. problems suitable for an effective
application of BI based on core
features.
Whether as a result of a behavioural reduction or not, the first stage of a BI project will
often present the practitioner and his or her team with a wider set of behaviours to which
BI might potentially be applied (sometimes also called a “gross list”). Thus, the
policymaker and the practitioner working with them will need some sort of decision-
making tool to develop a short list of those behaviours that are most likely to provide for
a successful project, also called a “net list”. The “priority filter” is such decision-making
tool (see Box 2.3). The priority filter is an instance of what in the BI literature is referred
to as a weighted additive decision rule, where choosers assign importance weights to each
attribute of a choice option and then compute an overall score for each alternative by
summing up the product of the importance weight and the score of that alternative
(Payne, Bettman and Johnson, 1993). The assumption of the priority filter is that the
success of a BI project crucially depends on a series of practical as well as empirical
features.
Box 2.3. How to apply a priority filter in practice
1. Remove and add questions from the filter (Table 2.3) as you find relevant
behaviours to the project at hand to create the relevant priority filter.
2. Inform all relevant team and stakeholders about the general purpose of and how to
understand each question posed in the priority filter.
3. Forward the priority filter as a template to all relevant team members and
stakeholders and ask them to fill this out independently of each other prior to the
next meeting (to avoid groupthink); one filter per relevant behaviour.
4. Gather relevant team members and stakeholders. Facilitate a discussion of the
answers provided to each question, especially answers where participants differ
substantially in their evaluation.
5. Agree on a “common evaluation” for each question evaluated for each behaviour.
6. Apply weights and rank each behaviour according to their total score.
Table 2.3 presents a priority filter formulated in terms of a questionnaire. Each question
tries to identify the presence or absence of crucial features by means of the Likert scale
evaluation (i.e. four- or five-point scales commonly encountered in surveys). In addition,
based on the specific project each feature should be attributed a weight, before adding the
score for each behaviour considered. It is important that such weights are formulated
prior to scoring behaviours, and possibly concealed to respondents, so as to avoid
motivated fiddling with these. Finally, one also needs to apply a decision rule for
shortlisting problems based on the result, e.g. deciding only to continue with the
three behaviours that get the highest score.
Table 2.3. Priority filter questionnaire
Fill out one questionnaire per behaviour using a Likert scale: (1) = definitely not, (2) = probably not,
(3) = uncertain, (4) = probably, (5) = definitely
Problem behaviour identified

Stakeholder question Score
1. Does the behaviour intuitively seem to be a behavioural problem?
That is, does the behaviour occur despite people having good reasons to act 1 2 3 4 5
otherwise as judged by themselves?
2. Is a change in the behaviour an institutional priority?
That is, would a group of policymakers in the domain intuitively evaluate 1 2 3 4 5
changing the behaviour as an institutional priority?
3. Could changing the behaviour serve as “proof of concept”?
That is, would success in changing the behaviour serve as a proof-of- 1 2 3 4 5
concept in addressing a wider set of policy issues?
4. Is targeting particular behaviour uncontroversial?
That is, will policymakers, citizens and relevant societal organisations agree 1 2 3 4 5
that it is legitimate to try to change the behaviour with BI?
5. Are relevant stakeholders motivated and ready to engage?
That is, would relevant stakeholders have the time and willingness to engage 1 2 3 4 5
in a project concerning the behaviour if you asked for their collaboration?
6. Are the relevant arenas accessible for the BI project?
That is, are the arenas in which the problem unfolds accessible to the BI 1 2 3 4 5
team relative to ownership and/or privacy issues?
7. Is the relevant data accessible?
Will it be relatively easy to get hold of existing data or record behavioural 1 2 3 4 5
data in light of practical and/or ethical issues?
BI team questions Score
8. Does the behaviour theoretically appear to be a behavioural problem?
That is, is the behaviour a likely result of psychological limitations, heuristics
1 2 3 4 5
and habits despite people having good reasons to act otherwise as judged by
themselves?
9. Are the reasons for a change in behaviour well documented?
That is, is the evidence that supports Questions 1 and 8 produced by 1 2 3 4 5
methodologies compatible with the psychological theories underpinning BI?
10. Have similar problems been addressed with BI?
That is, can you identify studies or projects where BI have been applied to a 1 2 3 4 5
similar problem?
FINAL SCORE:
Box 2.4. What is a behavioural problem?
A behavioural problem is a pattern in behaviour, whether regarded in terms of attention,

belief formation, choice or determination, that occurs despite people having good reason
to act otherwise. Hence a behavioural problem is not a problem of lack of: access to
information; proper attitudes; right incentives or sanction; or a need for further regulation
such as a ban or prohibition. In practice, such behaviour is often referred to as
“irrational”.
Tool #3: Defining potential target behaviours in terms of decision points

3. Conceptualise prioritised Use decision points to define prioritised
behavioural problems as decision behaviours so as to allow for the
points in such a way that the lens and application of concepts and methods
analytical tools of BI can readily be from the behavioural sciences.
applied.
Having shortlisted potential target behaviours, the next step is to define these behaviours
more closely. However, something which is often overlooked when working with a BI
project is that the primary focus is not that of a particular individual or group, but rather
behavioural tendencies, as they unfold in a given context. Hence, a BI project usually
derives the target group from a behavioural pattern (this is not to say that demographic
groups based on gender, age, income, etc. may not be used as secondary defining traits of
groups as well). This also implies that the field is different from, for instance, sociological
and communication science, where one often starts by defining target groups for an
intervention in demographic terms.
BI applies to a theoretical conceptualisation of behaviour, i.e. to behaviour as seen
through the lens of the theories and methods underpinning the BI approach. Thus, the
next step is for the policymaker and practitioner working with them is to ensure up front
that the behaviours studied are defined in accordance with these theories and methods –
in particular, this usually means describing behaviours in terms of decision points, even if
this is only a potential decision point.
Box 2.5. How to define behaviours in terms of decision points
A standard way to define behaviour in terms of decision points is to identify a generic

agent (the “who”) and the generic set of this agent’s available choice options (the
“what”). Such descriptions will be familiar to anyone trained in economics or decision
theory where “decision point models” are standard. Different from this, though,
behavioural decision points also include explicit references to the generic contexts within
which a behaviour unfolds (the “when-and-where”). Finally, and also different from
standard decision theory, descriptions of behavioural patterns as decision points ideally
identify the frequency distribution over choice options (generic behaviours) recorded or
observed in the generic context.
1. Provide the generic agent with a set of available choice options (the “what”).
2. Define a generic agent (the “who”).
3. Provide context to the set of options where the behavioural pattern unfolds (the
“when-and-where”).
4. Describe the observed frequency distribution over the choice options (how many
does a, how many does b, how many does c, etc.). This point ideally requires
surveys, observations or data-mining, but may be estimated if this is not possible.
In particular, neither a behavioural pattern nor its conceptualisation as a decision point

can be directly observed. Identifying a behavioural pattern and describing it as a decision
point is a constructive act, in which a model of the mind connects empirical observations
– that is, it is “a theoretical conceptualisation”. To apply BI then, the practitioner needs to
define potential target behaviours in terms of behavioural patterns conceptualised as
decision points. This means defining what behaviour is enacted by whom, when and
where?
Figure 2.4. Schema for conceptualising behaviour as a decision point
Who: Preferred behaviour
Where/When: Non-preferred behaviour
Tool #4: Identifying crucial decision points in processes using behavioural

flowcharts
Challenge Visual aid Decision-making tool

4. Conceptualising behavioural Use behavioural flowcharts to describe
problems as processes in such a way how a process unfolds and how people
that crucial decision points may be make choices throughout this.
identified (then return to 3).
At times one may encounter a potential target behaviour that is part of or results from a
process or chain of actions. In such cases, one cannot define the behaviour as a single
decision point but needs to unfold the potential target behaviour as a process of decision
points and identify the most crucial one(s), before this can be defined.
To this end, one may draft a “behavioural flowchart” (see Figure 2.5). A flowchart is a
well-known tool in data science and related disciplines. Flowcharts use a defined set of
arrows and shapes to represent activities and relationships in a process. The goal of the
diagram is to show how the steps in a process fit together by breaking down a process
into individual activities and illustrating the relationships between these activities, as well
as the flow of the process. A behavioural flowchart provides a detailed description of how
a process actually unfolds as well as attaches behavioural measures of how people make
choices throughout the process. This allows for quantitative comparative analysis of
decision points in the flowchart aimed at identifying the crucial decision points to define.
The simplicity of behavioural flowcharts also makes them useful tools for understanding
and sharing processes in teams as well as analysing these in an effort to identify, besides
crucial decision points, potential loose ends and friction points that inhibit the efficiency
and reliability of the process.
Figure 2.5. Symbols and sample behavioural flowchart
Flowcharts are drawn using arrows and shapes

of various kinds. START
• A process step which represents an

activity (denoted as a rectangular
box).
PARKING FINE
• A decision which represents a SENT
decision point (denoted as a
diamond).
• The start and the end of a process
(denoted as ovals).
30 DAYS
• Arrows that connect the symbols DELAY
and show process flow.
• Delay that represents a time period.
YES
Parking
END
fine paid
NO YES
SURCHARGE
REMINDER
ADDED &
PAID
REMINDER SENT
NO
HANDED
OVER TO TAX
AUTHORITY
Tool #5: Select the behavioural problem(s) with the best potential for a
behavioural approach
Challenge Visual aid Decision-making tool

5. Finally, select what behavioural Apply selection filters to finally select
problem(s) to target for further what behavioural problem(s) to target
analysis. for further analysis.
At this point, a “net list” of potential behavioural problems has been identified and
defined to target potential behaviours for a BI project. The next and final step of
BEHAVIOUR is to select the behaviour(s) that exhibits the best possible conditions for
behaviour change with a sizeable impact through the application of BI. In assessing this,
three heuristic (i.e. mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments) questions may be used as
consideration points as to what potential behaviour(s) to target. In BASIC, such questions
are referred to as a selection filter.
1. What do base rates combined with past policy effort indicate how difficult it
will be to change the behaviour?
A low base rate (e.g. <10% conformity to the preferred behaviour) may indicate, for
instance, that only a specific and select subset of people currently engage in this
behaviour or that very little effort has been put into changing this behaviour in the past. If
the latter is the case, it might not be a behavioural problem but just an informational one,
and traditional strategies may be a natural first step to consider – or, of course, it might
just be low-hanging fruit for a BI approach. However, if a high amount of effort has been
devoted in the past to changing this behaviour, then practitioners should carefully
consider what has been done so far and why base rates remain low despite past efforts.
A similar point pertains to very high base rates of conformity with the preferred
behaviour (e.g. >90%). If everyone is doing the right thing with little policy intervention,
then traditional policy efforts might be a first choice. However, if a lot of effort has been
put into changing this behaviour, the practitioner should investigate whether there might
be special challenges or reasons why a small number of people do not conform to the
behaviour enacted by others. Possibly such inquiry may lead to a revision of the target
group associated with the behaviour studied and thus a redefinition of the behavioural
problem.
Finally, many practitioners interpret a medium base rate as a good indicator of the
potential for behaviour change with a sizeable impact through the application of BI. A
reason for this is that BI mainly applies to behaviours resulting from limited attention,
informational complexity, weak preferences and minor friction, all of which are factors
making us vulnerable to behavioural bias. However, the studies of bias that underpin BI
rarely see extreme base rates. Thus, medium base rates better reflect the phenomena
studied by the underlying science. Medium base rates may also indicate a high potential
for change as they are often overlooked by past policy efforts because extreme cases tend
to attract more attention.
2. How will a potential behaviour change translate to impact?

Another crucial question to consider when evaluating the potential of changing target
behaviours is how such change will translate into individual and societal impact.
The relationship between the magnitude of the behaviour change and the resulting impact
varies depending on the issue at stake. To illustrate, one might aim to reduce street litter
in order to reduce a city’s cleaning costs. Yet, even a reduction of 50% of litter might not
have any economic impact at all. This could be the case if even mildly littered streets are
unacceptable to a city and its citizens. As a consequence, the municipality will have to
clean the streets with the same frequency and costs despite achieving 50% reduction in
litter. At the other extreme, sometimes even slight behavioural changes may generate a
big impact. This is, for instance, the case when it comes to generating competition on
complex markets. Here it may only take 5%-10% of consumers actively engaging in price
comparisons to drive competition with resulting benefits for all consumers. As a result,
one needs to carefully analyse how each of the potential behavioural changes considered
is likely to translate into impact.
3. What is the frequency with which the behaviour occurs?

A third and final question one needs to consider when deciding which behaviour to target
is how frequently the behaviour occurs. This question goes beyond asking about the
relationship between behaviour change and impact, as the behavioural pattern may be so
infrequent that the expected total societal impact will be negligible. On the other hand,
behaviour with apparent marginal costs or benefits per instance may be so frequent that
the aggregate impact of even a slight behavioural change may be considerable. Also, a
measure of the frequency with which a behaviour occurs will provide valuable
information about how long it will approximately take to reach the required number of
observations to allow for statistical analysis in the case that an intervention aimed at
changing the behaviour is to be tested.
Together, these three consideration points may be used as heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts
or intuitive judgments) to help select which behavioural problem to target in a BI project,
i.e. “the target behaviour”.
Ethical guidelines for identifying and defining the problem (BEHAVIOUR)

The initial stage of a BI project raises a series of special ethical issues that needs to be
considered from the outset. The BEHAVIOUR stage recommends ten ethical guidelines that
can be summarised as:
 Observe the limits of legitimate public policy interventions. Make sure that the
team refrains from targeting behaviours and behaviour changes that it cannot
defend in public as well as in the wider BI community. In particular, does not
automatically follow that BI will be applied in the service of people’s own
interests. Always consider the legitimacy of the public motive behind targeting a
given behaviour for change by comparing this to the regulatory paradigm the team
is operating within.
 Secure specific and robust acceptance when targeting behaviours. BI is
underpinned by psychological theories that take people’s self-reported behaviour,
beliefs and preferences to be easily influenced by the immediate context and
subject to biases. Always evaluate the existing evidence for targeting a given
behaviour change through the lens of the theories that underpin BI. Make sure that
acceptance of targeting a behaviour is not obtained due to framing and similar
influences and avoid inferring the acceptability of targeting specific behaviours
from acceptance of the general policy goal.
 Beware not to simplify behaviour too much. BEHAVIOUR conceptualises
behaviours as the aggregate patterns of groups. Yet, individuals usually hold
distinct preferences. Always assess the heterogeneity of preferences in groups and
consider how to protect individual rights, values and liberties when targeting
behaviour change. Also, a change in one behaviour often leads to changes in other
behaviours and such derivative changes may not impact all citizens in the same
way. Always consider what the potential side effects might be of pursuing a given
behaviour change and for whom, and involve stakeholders with relevant
knowledge about what these might be.
 Special considerations for the use of private data. This will often pertain not
only to attitudes and beliefs but also to actual behaviour of citizens. A BI project
will often involve collecting and making use of types of data, which is often
standardly contained or connected in the databases of governmental agencies.

This includes: i) primary behavioural data (i.e. data on or related to the real-world
behaviour of citizens); ii) secondary behavioural data (i.e. data on variables
related to people’s attention, belief formation, preference construction,
determination and more); iii) contextual data (i.e. data on contextual variables,
including seemingly irrelevant aspects of choice architectures); and iv) data on
people’s reflective preferences (in so far as such exist) about what people believe
they ought to do given their available options.
Table 2.4. Ethical guidelines for Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR
1. Ethics is an issue to be observed from the outset of BASIC. As a first step in BEHAVIOUR, establish an ethical
review board to follow the project from day one and throughout its existence with a clear eye on the following guidelines.
If this is too ambitious for the project at hand, then outline the ethical issues associated with a project, how the project
proposes to address these and consider where ethical approval is required.
2. Behaviour, like other explorative stages in BI projects, often involves data collection and analysis that goes
beyond what is standard in government agencies. Appoint at least one member of the ethical review board or the BI
team to supervise ethical aspects of data collection and use.
3. Behaviour is characterised by working across institutional boundaries. Make sure all team members observe
existing ethical guidelines and codes of conduct of the particular fields that the project involves as well as receive the
necessary training to comply with these.
4. Do not be a passive bystander. Discuss and establish procedures for how the team handles collaborating parties
that fail to comply with their own ethical guidelines and codes of conduct, while also observing that honesty, anonymity
and whistleblowing is to be protected.
5. Existing ethical guidelines and codes of conduct will not cover all aspects of a BI project. As part of Behaviour,
establish a procedure from the outset for flagging activities and data collection that are not covered by these and for how
to perform an ethical review in such cases.
6. Behaviour targets behavioural problems, i.e. behaviours where people fail to achieve their preferred ends due
to psychological factors. Yet, not all such behaviours fall within the legitimate confines of public policy. Make sure that
the team refrains from targeting behaviours and behaviour changes that it cannot defend in public as well as in the wider
BI community.
7. While Behaviour targets behavioural problems, it does not automatically follow that BI will be applied in the
service of people’s own interests. Always consider the legitimacy of the public motive behind targeting a given
behaviour for change by comparing this to the regulatory paradigm the team is operating within.
8. Behaviour conceptualises behaviours as the aggregate patterns of groups. Yet, individuals usually hold distinct
preferences. Always assess the heterogeneity of preferences in groups and consider how to protect individual rights,
values and liberties when targeting behaviour change.
9. A change in one behaviour often leads to changes in other behaviours. Always consider the potential side effects
of pursuing a given behaviour change, involve stakeholders with relevant knowledge about these and create suitable
measures for monitoring potential side effects throughout all relevant stages in the project.
10. BI is underpinned by psychological theories that take people’s self-reported behaviour, beliefs and
preferences to be easily influenced by the immediate context. To serve the people, rather than the context, always
evaluate the existing evidence for targeting a given behaviour change through the lens of the theories that underpin BI.
Note
1
In the BASIC manual, the core stages of BASIC are referred to in small caps (i.e. “BEHAVIOUR”)
to distinguish the stage from the regular use of the word (i.e. in BEHAVIOUR you diagnose the
behaviour problems).
Stage 2: ANALYSIS – Understanding why people act as they do
Stage 2: ANALYSIS
In the second stage of BASIC – ANALYSIS – the practitioner focuses on analysing the
target behaviour(s) and the choice architecture(s) that are embedded within this
behaviour. The aim is to understand why people act as they do. BASIC differs from other
BI approaches by emphasising the importance of analysis and its systematic relationship
to relevant strategies. This feature is captured through the ABCD framework that suggests
behavioural problems may be analysed in terms of four aspects:
1. Attention.
2. Belief formation.
3. Choice.
4. Determination.
When
ANALYSIS is held to be too important to ignore in any responsible BI project and it is
crucial for the team to highlight the stage so as to be given the time to conduct a proper
analysis. ABCD, however, takes some effort to master and other existing non-diagnostic
frameworks (see Box 2.6) may be substituted if wanting to generate ideas faster. Also,
ABCD may be supplemented with more traditional approaches.
Milestone
Provided that the policymaker and practitioner have reached a satisfying confidence level
with regards to the outcomes of this stage, Stages 1 and 2 may be referred to as a
“behavioural analysis” of the behavioural problem. Using ABCD for this analysis can
form the basis for identifying effective behavioural STRATEGIES for informing public
policy (Stage 3).
The first stage of BASIC focused on how to approach a policy problem from a BI
perspective from the outset of the policy cycle. The stage ended with the practitioner
selecting one or more behavioural problems to which BI may potentially be applied.
Stage 2: ANALYSIS aims to understand why people act as they do relative to the target
behaviour(s), as seen through the lens of BI. This is particularly challenging, as insights
from the behavioural sciences are often counter-intuitive as well as reveal how people
struggle when trying to recall facts, attribute correct causes and make successful
predictions. While standard qualitative methods have a lot to offer in terms of learning
about people’s perspectives, their knowledge and assumptions, they cannot easily report
on why people act as they do, what psychological mechanisms are involved and what
would effectively influence their behaviour. Thus, a BI approach should always be
cautious about the validity of more traditional approaches.
BI and considerations in understanding why people act as they do

At the heart of BASIC one finds an iterative systematic inquiry combined with
behaviourally informed indicators (i.e. “symptoms”) and mixed methods that seek to
generate hypotheses about why people act as they do. This process of inquiry is the
ABCD framework, which is introduced in this chapter and will be progressively
developed through this and the subsequent stage.
The selection of method(s) for why people act as they do relative to the behaviour studied
is based on what kind of information is sought, from whom and under what circumstances
(Robson, 2001). Different from traditional scientific research, the study of behaviour in
the real world is characterised by the adoption of flexible research designs where the
nature and number of methods used can change as data collection continues. Thus, there
is no single or straightforward way to go about understanding why people act as they do
in a BI perspective.
The behavioural sciences as defined earlier, in their current form, already present a wide
range of methodological approaches for studying the individual, social and contextual
factors that cause behaviours and how such behaviours may be modified. Unfortunately
for BI, many of these methods, those from behavioural economics for example, have
mainly been designed for strictly controlled conditions in laboratory settings. Hence, they
are not readily applicable to studying the behaviours of citizens, consumers and
employees acting in the real world, nor for designing better public policy.
This poses a challenge which is enhanced by the fact that many of those who want to
work with BI have not been trained in the theories and methodologies underpinning the
behavioural sciences. As a result, there is a tendency towards applying more traditional
methods for studying behaviour in the real world, such as classical questionnaires,
interviews, focus groups, etc., which remains less inquisitive about the face validity of the
data produced by such methods; such traditional methods are also easier for stakeholders
to understand. This tendency is even further enhanced by the fact that many tend to
perceive BI not only as an innovative but also perhaps more creative participatory and
colourful approach than it really is. Consequently, in many places, BI is often merged
with other innovative paradigms such as design thinking and collaboration without much
regard to the fundamental differences between these paradigms and with the danger of
diluting the theoretically grounded contributions that BI has to offer.
To meet this challenge, it is important for practitioners to recognise and emphasise that
methodological eclecticism is constrained by theoretical consistency. One cannot, for
instance, ask a person to provide a consistent explanation why he or she does what they
do, while at the same time assuming the drivers of behaviour to be largely outside the
bounds of rationality and perhaps even outside of reflective consciousness. Further,
policymakers and practitioners working with them should always pay close attention to
what aspects of methodologies can be reconciled with the psychological theories
underpinning the behavioural sciences and what cannot. In particular, the application of
many standard methodologies only makes sense given that they are suitably adapted to
accommodate the insights provided by these theories.
Analysing behaviour calls for methodological eclecticism as well as theoretical

consistency
BASIC adopts a flexible approach in the stage of ANALYSIS dependent on the behavioural
problems studied and where the nature and number of methods used can change as data
collection continues. Thus, there is no single or straightforward way to go about
understanding why people act as they do in a BI perspective. Rather than going through
the various methods that might be used in ANALYSIS, some central points for practitioners
to consider are stated here.
Beware of face validity. In accommodating standard methodologies to BI, probably the
first and foremost thing to observe is the consequences that dual process and similar
psychological theories have for the constructs and phenomena usually studied. For
instance, different from standard methodologies, such theories often approach self-reports
as inherently unreliable as these are taken to be subject to cognitive limitations and bias.
In particular, self-reported memories, beliefs, preferences, intentions and experiences are
not regarded as mental facts fetched from our inner libraries but rather as constructions
assembled or inferences made when the circumstances call for them. As behavioural
scientist Nick Chater (2018) radically puts it, “the mind is flat” and the inner library is
itself a cognitive illusion. It is crucial for the practitioner to continuously consider
whether the methodologies applied tap into facts and not just their face validity.
Triangulate if possible. A further consequence of the theoretical underpinnings of BI is
that standard methodologies should be treated with care and if possible be
methodologically triangulated. Qualitative interviews, self-reported answers to survey
questions and even observations should be treated as explorative experimentations tracing
the truth rather than providing it. So as in any other real-world situation, where the
inquirer has available multiple but unreliable sources, one needs to crosscheck and
possibly perform small-scale tests and experimentation to get the story right.
Get up close with reality. Due to their cost-effectiveness and face validity, participatory
workshops, focus groups and expert interviews are currently standard tools when trying to
find out why people act as they do (as well as what to do about it). Yet, such sources
should be evaluated relative to the mental distance from the actual behaviour inquired
into and should be disfavoured relative to methods, such as in situ interviews and direct
observational studies of first-hand experience by those involved in the behaviour as well
as by practitioners themselves. Also, in this aspect, the BI approach to public policy is
new. An ambitious way of stating this would be to say that “no policy can truly be said to
be behaviourally informed if the informant has not been there herself to observe through
the lens of BI – from within as well as from the outside – how the target behaviour
subject to the policy actually unfolds in its natural context”. But insofar as this is regarded
as too idealistic, it should at least be an ideal to aspire to.
ABCD – A framework for structuring ANALYSIS

At the heart of BASIC’s ANALYSIS is the idea that through an iterative systematic
inquiry, practitioners may form hypotheses based on best guesses according to the best
evidence available – much like a doctor devises diagnostic procedures and tests to form
hypotheses about illnesses based on their systematic relationship to symptoms. This type
of reasoning is called “abductive” reasoning – reasoning to the best possible explanation,
and always subject to uncertainty. Still, the reason for putting significant efforts into
pursuing a diagnostic approach in the analysis of behaviour is that this ultimately
provides a more effective and responsible approach to the development of behaviourally
informed STRATEGIES to be tested as part of the stage of INTERVENTION.
To assist the process of abductive reasoning, ANALYSIS offers a framework called ABCD
for structuring the diagnostic inquiry, which are Attention, Belief formation, Choice and
Determination (see Figure 2.6).
Like existing BI frameworks (see Box 2.6), ABCD seeks to assist practitioners in
analysing behavioural problems on the basis of behavioural insights. Different from these
frameworks, however, ABCD goes beyond presenting a list of selected insights. Instead,
it includes a structured diagnostic approach for analysing target behaviour(s) that looks
at:
1. Diagnostic aspect and indicators: The inner two circles in the figure that helps
narrow behaviours into their respective section(s) of the ABCD Framework. This
will be developed in the remainder of Stage 2: ANALYSIS.
2. Strategies: The second outermost circle that gives a starting point for solving
behaviours diagnosed in the respective section(s) of the ABCD Framework. This
will be further developed in Stage 3: STRATEGIES.
3. Insights: The outermost circle that gives behavioural solutions used in different
contexts around the world as a starting point for testing possible behaviourally
informed policy initiatives. This will be further developed in Stage 3:
STRATEGIES.
ABCD is derived from the fundamental assumption of BI that behavioural problems
result from systematic deviations from what is predicted by rational models (see also
DellaVigna (2009) for a similar idea); and since rational models make predictions within
the aspects of Attention, Belief formation, Choice and Determination, relevant aspects of
behavioural problems must be examinable according to these four domains.
Figure 2.6. The ABCD framework
Aspects of behavioural
problems: ABCD distinguishes
Categories of Behavioural between four aspects of
Insights strategies: For behavioural problems – Attention,
practical convenience Belief formation, Choice and
behavioural insights Determination. A behavioural
strategies are sorted into problem may be caused by several
broad categories that factors within one aspect as well
function as easily identifiable as by factors from several aspects.
keys to more specific Excessive ABCD allows the practitioner to
self-directed Forgetting
behavioural insights blame
conduct a systematic inquiry into
strategies. Inertia & Overlooking each aspect as well as a matching
procrastination
of strategies to problematic
Relegating
Mental Willpower is
a limited resource
Attention is
scarce, easily
aspects.
taxation &
exhaustion that may easily be distracted, quickly Multitasking
depleted. It also overwhelmed
Cognitive requires and subject to
dissonance competencies switching Distractions Diagnostic indicators: Certain
to exert. costs
phenomena indicate the
BASIC relevancy of each diagnostic
Choices are
Social motives shaped by
Making sense
of the world
Holding on to
pre-existing
domain. These phenomena are
& meanings contextual cues,
the arrangement
provided limited beliefs referred to as diagnostic
memory, attention,
& framing of options
information & Bad at stats indicators.
Sensitivity to as well as by
framing & processing
preferences Over- & under-
arrangements power
& incentives confidence
Sticky status Having difficulties Diagnostic aspect: The

quo
Doubt,
with abstractions diagnostic aspect contains the
Relying excessively on
disappointment “rules of thumb”
broader psychological theories
& regret
Behavioural Insights that have been developed to
strategies: In the outermost account for a particular aspect of
ring one finds examples of behaviour as defined by the
behavioural insights ABCD. Thus, the aspect contains
strategies that contains psychological theories of attention,
specific behavioural insights belief formation, choice and
that may be used to determination.
understand as well as
influence target behaviours.
Box 2.6. Some key BI frameworks
With the rise of BI around the world, a number of useful frameworks have been
developed by both government and non-government agencies. Similar to ABCD, all of
these frameworks use a simple mnemonic to establish an analytical tool aimed at helping
a policymaker think about behavioural issues within a policy problem. While ABCD can
be seen as “another framework”, it was designed and optimised to be used as the
analytical heart of the BASIC process framework rather than a standalone tool.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of widely referenced frameworks that complement ABCD
and could be a resource for policymakers looking for different ways to analyse a
behavioural problem.
 MINDSPACE (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2010): Provided an early
checklist for thinking about how nine well-evidenced behavioural insights may
inform public policy development, design and delivery.
 Test, Learn, and Adapt (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2013): Gave an
accessible introduction to the basics of using randomised controlled trials in
policy evaluation.
 EAST (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2013): Provided a simple framework
considering how behavioural insights may help design policies based on
leveraging convenience, social aspects of decision-making and the attractiveness
and timeliness of policies.
 World Development Report: Mind, Society, and Behavior (World Bank,
2015): Gave a comprehensive overview of how the BI perspective on human
decision-making is of relevance to development policy.
 Define, Diagnose, Design, Test (ideas42, 2017): Provided a practical framework
for thinking through a problem and identifying behaviourally informed solutions.
 US Internal Revenue Service Behavioral Insights Toolkit (IRS, 2017): Created
to be a practical resource for use by IRS employees and researchers who are
looking to use BI in their work.
 Assess, Aim, Action, Amend (BEAR, 2018): Presented a playbook developed for
applying BI in organisations outlining four steps for applying BI.
Sources: The Behavioural Insights Team (2013), Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with
Randomised Controlled Trials, https://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/upl
oads/2015/07/TLA-1906126.pdf (accessed on 6 November 2018); The Behavioural Insights Team (2010),
MINDSPACE, https://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/publications/mindspace/ (accessed on 6 November
2018); World Bank (2015), The World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behaviour,
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Publications/WDR/WDR%202015/WDR-2015-Full-Rep
ort.pdf (accessed on 6 November 2018); ideas42 (2017), Define, Diagnose, Design, Test,
http://www.ideas42.org/blog/first-step-towards-solution-beta-project/ (accessed on 6 November 2018); IRS
(2017), Behavioral Insights Toolkit, https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/17rpirsbehavioralinsights.pdf; BEAR
(2018), How Should Organizations Best Embed and Harness Behavioural Insights? A Playbook,
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/-/media/Files/Programs-and-Areas/BEAR/White-Papers/BEAR_BIinOrgs.pdf
?la=en (accessed on 6 November 2018).
Further, practitioners may not only use ABCD to systematically form hypotheses based
on best guesses according to the best evidence available but, as will be evident from the
next stage, ABCD also provides a key for systematically identifying what behavioural
strategies may be relevant if the aim is to influence the target behaviour.
The four aspects of behavioural problems

The framework begins with ABCD itself: Attention, Belief formation, Choice and
Determination. The assumption is that since rationality provides for prescriptions in each
of these four aspects of behaviour, behavioural problems – understood here as deviations
from such prescriptions – must be examinable in terms of these aspects as well. Thus, a
prerequisite of applying ABCD is understanding in broad terms, what rationality
prescribes in these four aspects:
 Attention is about what to focus on in a given context. Here the rules of
rationality are quite simple assuming that people cannot focus on everything. To
act rationally in this domain, people should focus on what is the most important
aspect of the context in light of one’s knowledge and preferences.
 Belief formation is about making judgments provided the information that one
has available. Here the rules of rationality are quite complex and have been a
subject matter of philosophy and theory of science since Ancient Greece.
Simplified somewhat, to act rationally, people should form their beliefs according
to the rules of logic as applied to well-defined propositions as well as rationally
update their beliefs in light of new information according to sound probability
theory.
 Choice is about making decisions between the available choice options given
one’s preferences. How to do this rationally has traditionally been the subject
matter of philosophy of choice, decision theory and microeconomics. Again
simplifying, rationality has it that, to act rationally, people should make choices
so as to maximise subjective expected utility.
 Determination is about sticking to one’s choices. Determination, including the
subject matters of self-control and willpower, has not been studied much relative
to rationality. The reason for this might be that the rules of rationality ultimately
are quite simple in this domain as well. Provided that one decides to pursue
certain long-term goals, one should keep to their plan.
Ignoring the details of academic debate, these rules of rationality as applied in the
four domains are quite uncontroversial. That is, focusing on the most important priorities,
forming logically sound beliefs according to the information available, making choices
that maximise subjective expected utility based on one’s preferences (whatever they
might be), and then sticking to those choices is advice that any reasonable person would
subscribe to.
Yet, advances in the behavioural sciences have revealed that people inhabiting the real
and complex world, have difficulties adhering to this advice thus making us predictably
irrational. While we readily embrace the rules of rationality, we tend to forget that more
intuitive-automatic processes provide the foundational as well as, at times, only
mechanisms driving our behaviour. The consequences of this are summarised in very
general terms in the four diagnostic domains and associated with certain diagnostic
indicators (symptoms) that practitioners may use as cues of their relevance in the
analysis.
Box 2.7. Critical steps for using the ABCD framework
In the second and third stage of BASIC, practitioners apply the ABCD framework in the
ANALYSIS (Stage 2) of target behaviour(s) as well as in the systematic identification of
appropriate STRATEGIES (Stage 3) for designing INTERVENTIONS that may inform public
policies aimed at creating behaviour CHANGE.
ABCD works by focusing on the practitioner’s analysis on each of four aspects of
behaviour that tend to cause the biases involved in behavioural problems and changes. It
is implicit but worth noting: your behavioural problem or change can connect with more
than one aspect, so care must be paid to considering the full framework in your analysis.
The main steps in the application of ABCD are to:
1. Select a target behaviour for ANALYSIS (see Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR).
2. Become familiar with the behaviour studied by observing the behaviour; engaging
in the behaviour; interviewing people engaging in, or otherwise involved in the
behaviour; as well as by determining what data already exists and examining it.
3. Use indicators such as those defined by ABCD to hypothesise what behavioural
aspects (e.g. attention, belief formation, choice, determination) are likely to be
involved in causing the behavioural problem or obstacle for change.
4. Consider all potential data that could, in principle, be recorded about the target
behaviour relative to the generated hypotheses in (3) if everything was possible.
5. Determine what further data could be recorded through behaviourally informed
methods to support or even test hypotheses in (3).
6. Return to the field to study, record further data and if possible, conduct falsifiable
tests of the hypotheses about what behavioural factors may cause the behavioural
problem or obstacle involved in the target behaviour.
Repeat Steps 2 to 6 until the team is sufficiently confident in the viability of the
hypotheses given the time and cost constraints of the project.
Diagnostic aspect and indicators
Attention – The window of the mind

An implicit assumption is often made that our attention capacities are more or less
boundless, which allows us to focus on whatever is most important. This assumption
follows quite naturally from the idea that any behaviour, including what we attend to, is
seen to be a behaviour that is maximising expected utility. It is also from this assumption
that rationality provides its sole prescription for attention: focus on whatever is most
important.
This rational treatment of human attention stands in marked contrast to that provided by
cognitive and social psychology. Here human attention has been shown to be surprisingly
scarce, easily distracted, quickly overwhelmed and subject to switching costs. All of these
seriously affect our ability to spot what is important as well as bias our processing of
whatever is in focus.
Figure 2.7. Attention
Behaviours that, from a rational perspective will appear as deliberate, may, from a
behavioural viewpoint, be analysed in terms of at least five types of inattention.
 Forgetting: if there is nothing, in particular, within a given context to remind
people about the need to attend to a specific action, then people will tend to forget
to carry out this action. As a consequence, people may miss their doctors’
appointments, fail to file tax, take their medication, and the like.
 Overlooking: If there is nothing to attract people’s attention to the appropriate
action when carrying out an alternative task, they will tend to overlook the
appropriate task. As a result, people may easily overlook speed limits when
driving, sanitisers when visiting family at the hospital and gorillas when they are
counting passes of a basketball.
 Relegating: If a task is gaining someone’s immediate attention, in a context
where more pressing tasks could be attended to, people will tend to relegate
attention to the immediate task. Consequently, people tend to relegate attention to
actions, even when brought to their attention in an irrelevant context. For
example, this happens when reminding people about deadlines for filing taxes
while seated in the cinema or warning young people partying about the long-term
health consequences of smoking.
 Multitasking: If people are engaging in multiple tasks simultaneously, their
ability to detect relevant information and perform cognitive tasks is influenced
significantly. As a consequence, texting while driving leads to decreased
performance in traffic, multitasking while working at industrial sites leads
workers to ignore potential safety risks, and multitasking in the surgical operating
theatre results in doctors ignoring procedures.
 Distractions: If people are switching back and forth between tasks, performing
tasks in rapid succession or become distracted by irrelevant cues, cognitive
performance, as well as memory retention, will suffer significantly. This is what
happens when students switch back and forth between listening to a lecture and
surfing the Internet, when office workers work in open plan offices or when
workers switch between emails and important decisions during a meeting.
These five types of inattention are concepts drawn from everyday language but with
descriptions based on insights from the behavioural sciences. As such, they provide
bridges for the policymaker and practitioner to explore relevant fields in search of more
specific behavioural insights that might explain the targeted behavioural problem or
challenge.
Anticipating the next stage, STRATEGIES, the practitioner may thus look at the following
behavioural insights when analysing a target behavioural problem relative to the aspect of
attention:
 Is the decision point located when relevant1 for people? In particular, is the
decision point well-timed and placed in a context where people are in a suitable
state-of-mind?
 What do people attend to at the relevant decision point and, if they are not
attending to what they ought to, what is seizing their attention instead and why?
In particular, what part of the context is salient to them, do they get a reminder, is
a decision point prompted and does attention play out in a social context?
 What happens if people are inattentive at the decision point? In particular, is there
a default that is mediated by inattention into a particular effect or some other sort
of safety mechanism in place?
Belief formation – Making sense of the world
Figure 2.8. Belief formation
The second aspect to look into when analysing a target behavioural problem is the role
played by belief formation – the processes involved in making sense of the world. In this
domain, epistemic rationality assumes that everyone carefully searches for and scrutinises
all relevant information; seeks new information and updates beliefs accordingly; and
adheres to rules of logic and probability theory, even when matters get complex and
extended computational power is required. However, the behavioural findings relative to
belief formation differs in multiples ways from that predicted by models of epistemic
rationality. For humans, belief formation is mainly about quickly making sense of the
world by consistently creating a coherent worldview based on our preconceptions; a
model that works well enough to make successful predictions and choices, within the
psychological limits imposed by attention, memory, information and processing powers.

From a behavioural viewpoint the consequence is that the following five general
problems often occur indicating that informational search, intuitive understanding and
judgments may be subject to biases in belief formation.
 Holding on to pre-existing beliefs: In trying to maintain a coherent picture of the
world people tend to ignore information that does not fit into their existing
worldview or information they fear may cause psychological discomfort. Even
when searching for new information or better understanding, they tend form
beliefs according to the information they have readily available, especially if this
information is insufficient for reaching a conclusion. In general, this concept is
referred to as “confirmation biases”.
 Bias statistical sampling: In situations of uncertainty, people are prone to
perform sampling errors, such as neglecting base rates, or use conveniently
available information to form beliefs about the likelihood of events. This issue
often falls under the title of “sampling and statistically biases”.
 Over- and under-confidence: People have difficulty distinguishing relevant
from irrelevant information when assessing the correctness of their beliefs and the
level of confidence that the evidence warrants. For example, if asked to evaluate
the truth of information, they may confuse the confidence and/or the credibility of
the messenger with the likelihood of the message being true. Likewise, they can
be influenced by the availability of memory or recent past thoughts when passing
judgment. This phenomenon is referred to as “confidence biases”.
 Having difficulties with abstractions: People tend to poorly estimate concepts
when they become more abstract, such as probabilities, money or time. For
instance, people overestimate small probabilities and underestimate large ones,
which impact our perceptions of chance and risk. Likewise, people underestimate
the importance of abstract information and overestimate concrete anecdotes.
 Relying excessively on mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments: People tend to
rely on simple mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments (i.e. heuristics) to reach
conclusions, especially when under uncertainty. They are easily influenced by
what other people do, use simple mental models to understand complex systems
and often fall prey to logical fallacies.
The practitioner may look at some categories of behavioural insights that have often
proved to be relevant when problems of belief formation are present.
 What principles guide peoples’ search for information? For instance, what are
their pre-existing beliefs, do they eliminate information by aspects (as when
searching for a hotel online), and what questions and doubts direct their search?
 How does context interact with intuitive belief formation? Do contextual features
support correct belief formation and what mental models do people use to make
sense of the world?
 What kinds of information support people’s judgment? What heuristics do they
rely on when forming beliefs? How do physical and social contexts support the
adoption of the heuristics that people apply?
Excessive
self-directed
blame
Forgetting
Inertia & Overlooking
procrastination
Relegating
Choice – Making the best of opportunities Mental
taxation &
Willpower is
a limited resource
Attention is
scarce, easily
Figure 2.9.dissonance
Choice
Cognitive requires
competencies
and subject to
switching Distractions
to exert. costs
Choices are
BASIC
Making sense Holding on to
Social motives shaped by
of the world pre-existing
& meanings contextual cues,
provided limited beliefs
the arrangement
memory, attention,
& framing of options Bad at stats
Sensitivity to information &
as well as by
framing & processing
preferences Over- & under-
arrangements power
& incentives confidence
Sticky status Having difficulties

quo with abstractions
Doubt, Relying excessively on
disappointment “rules of thumb”
& regret
The third aspect to consider when analysing a behavioural problem is how preferences are
constructed and choices influenced when making choices. Rationality assumes people
make choices based on preferences – or preferences inferred from choices – by assuming
people adhere to a handful of axioms prescribing how to make the best of opportunities in
an instrumentally rational way.
The rational portrayal of choice behaviour has, however, been the main target in the
emergence of behavioural economics. During the last 50 years, this discipline at the heart
of BI has relentlessly brought forward experimental evidence showing how humans differ
in their decision-making from the rational actor of traditional economics. The research
agenda of behavioural economics has thus revealed that, as with belief formation, choice
behaviour is often constructed on the spot and potentially influenced by a long list of
cognitive biases. For instance, materially incentivising choices may crowd out intrinsic
motivation; the mere arrangement, formulation and “framing” of choice options may
significantly influence choice behaviour; and social aspects, such as social cues,
comparisons and meanings, may potentially attract or detract people from choosing
particular options, regardless of the outcome.
As traditional economic analysis constitutes one of the core strategies of traditional public
policy it is not surprising to find that BI, especially insights from behavioural economics,
have significant implications for policy analysis of why people choose as they do and
what strategies to pursue when trying to influence choices. In analysing behavioural
problems, practitioners thus should keep a close eye not only on the material incentives
associated with outcomes but also on the list of indicators that choices are unduly
influenced by psychological factors as well, including:
 Doubt, disappointment and regret: If a decision point presents a complex,
confusing or misleading choice architecture people may tend to express doubt
ex ante and disappointment or regret ex post their choices. As a consequence,
people will levy more unwarranted consumer complaints and bad online user
reviews, or spend excessive time making decisions (choice overload) and avoid
talking about past choices.
 Sticky status quo: If people own, create or otherwise invest time, energy or
resources in a project, they may excessively stick to the status quo. This may lead
people to pour more resources into an investment already lost (sunk cost fallacy)
or reject reasonable offers for property they own (endowment effect) or have put
effort into creating (IKEA effect).
 Sensitivity to framing and arrangements: If people have weak preferences or
face situations of risk or uncertainty, their choices may be overly sensitive to the
mere formulation or arrangement of choices (framing). As a result, people make
different choices as losses loom larger than gains (loss aversion); avoid risks
when outcomes are framed as gains but become attracted to risks when outcomes
are framed as losses (risk aversion for gains and risk attraction for losses); prefer
options that are presented first in a series (order effect); resort to choosing the
middle option in a series (compromise effect) but extreme options for more
complex choices (extremeness effect) or options arranged as weakly dominant
options (asymmetric dominance effect); and many more.
 Social motives, meanings and norms: If choices involve social motives,
meanings and norms, they will often be made in ways that deviate from
predictions based on analysis of extrinsic motivation, such as material incentives.
Extrinsic motives such as monetary incentives or punishment may undermine
intrinsic motivation and hence lead to the opposite effect of that intended
(crowding out of motives). People may also choose a non-preferred choice if it
takes on a social meaning (social meaning; reaction) or imitate celebrities in, for
example, conspicuous consumption (social imitation, status cascades); or are
influenced by social norms, such as failing to blow the whistle to avoid being a
“snitch” (conformity); choose the default setting because it is perceived as the
socially accepted choice (the default effect by recommendation); or give money to
strangers (reciprocity; fairness).
Again, anticipating the next stage, STRATEGIES, the practitioner may look at some
behavioural insights that have often proved to be relevant when choice problems are part
of the target behavioural problem.
 What makes a given choice attractive to people? For instance, what is the motive
they are acting upon, what perspectives do they include, and how does it connect
with emotions?
 How are choices framed? Does the arrangement of choice options seem to
influence people’s behaviour and are choices described in particular ways?
 What social motives, meanings and norms is the target behaviour embedded
within? Does the behaviour connect with social identities and how? And is the
behaviour subject to social norms?
Determination: Sticking to choices over time

The fourth aspect of behavioural problems that practitioners may explore is the role
played by determination, defined as behaviours requiring people to stick to their choices
over time when challenged by issues, often referred to as willpower, self-regulation or
self-control. Like attention, determination has not been a core theme in studies of
rationality, aside from the simple assumption that when people make long-term goals,
they should stick to them.
Figure 2.10. Determination
Excessive
self-directed Forgetting
blame
Inertia & Overlooking
procrastination
Attention is Relegating
Mental Willpower is
taxation & a limited resource scarce, easily
Cognitive requires and subject to
dissonance competencies switching Distractions
to exert. costs
Choices are
BASIC
Making sense Holding on to
Social motives
The behavioural sciences have shown the rational assumptions of determination
& meanings
shaped by
of the world
contextual cues,
provided limited
to be
pre-existing
beliefs
the arrangement
illusory and ideal. Studies have shown that fundamental
Sensitivity to
attribution error makes
memory, attention,
& framing of options
information & Bad us
at statsliable
as well as by
to interpret other people’s behaviour in the arrangements
realm
framing & of determination processing
power as Over-
preferences a & result
under- of
& incentives
confidence
dispositional factors, rather than situational factors, Sticky even
status
though situational factors
Having difficulties
are
often a more likely cause. More precisely, determination quo is significantly with
Doubt, influenced
abstractions
Relying excessively on
by at
least three dimensions: mental taxation, which affects everyone, disappointment
& regret
“rules in every aspect of
of thumb”
ABCD, from those under cognitive pressure to those continually in poor or impoverished
living conditions, especially when the consequences become very direct (Mullainathan
and Shafir, 2013); learned strategies or competencies (Mischel, 2014) for dealing with
temptations; and situational factors (choice architecture) (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). As
a result, people often take one action with the genuine feeling that they should be taking
another. The danger then is assuming failures in determination are associated with a
personality issue rather than socio-economic and situational variables that one has little
control over.
As such, it is important for practitioners to look for diagnostic indicators related to
determination such as:
 Cognitive dissonance: When people face challenges to their long-term goals,
they experience mental discomfort or psychological stress. This can trigger
increased pulse rates, anger and physical sway. Cognitively, people search for
ways to reconcile immediate gratification with their long-term goals (motivated
reasoning) or may exaggerate the desirability of the long-term goal (effort
justification).
 Mental taxation or exhaustion: Another indicator of one’s determination being
challenged is the experience of mental taxation or exhaustion. This causes
people’s minds to be less efficient (tunnelling) due to the consumption of “mental
bandwidth” (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013) that would otherwise go to less
pressing concerns, planning ahead and problem-solving. This may result in
cognitive deficits, self-defeating actions and an increased tendency to be
distracted by inner and outer interruptions.
 Inertia and procrastination: The complete (inertia) or temporary

(procrastination) avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished through
a series of characteristic psychological strategies (coping behaviours). People may
use avoidance, denial, distractions or may blame unrelated situational factors as
reasons preventing the achievement of their goals.
 Excessive self-directed blame: When challenges lead to failure, people may
blame themselves and experience regret. This is why job-seekers failing to apply
successfully for jobs, people failing at a diet or failing to quit smoking may come
to adjust their self-perception as well as experience lower self-esteem and guilt. In
extreme cases, this may also lead to clinical depression.
Again, anticipating the next stage, STRATEGIES, the practitioner may look at some
categories of behavioural insights that has often proved to be relevant when problems of
determination have been part of the target behavioural problem.
 What are the points of friction relative to a desired behaviour? Is there friction if
wanting to do the right thing and is it too easy to do the wrong thing?
 Do people have plans and are they given feedback? For example, do they have a
plan for when to do what and are they given various kinds of feedback when
pursuing their goals?
 How do performance and goal achievement interact with the social context? How,
if at all, do people commit themselves in pursuit of their long-term goals and what
kinds of expectations do such commitments create in other people? Are social
norms at play, such as failing to blow the whistle to avoid being seen as an
informer (conformity), choosing the default setting because it is perceived as the
socially accepted choice (default effect by recommendation) or giving money to
strangers (reciprocity; fairness)?
Ethical guidelines for understanding why people act as they do (ANALYSIS)

Seeking to understand why people act as they do in a BI perspective may involve a wide
range of methods. These methods share the following common characteristics: they
usually observe or study human behaviour, running the risk of affecting participants’
personal lives and colliding with people’s privacy rights.
It is important to emphasise that the ethical guidelines presented as part of BEHAVIOUR
should also be observed when working with ANALYSIS, in particular, the guideline stating
that “all team-members observe existing ethical guidelines and codes of conduct of the
particular fields that the project involves as well as receive the necessary training to
comply with these”.
Besides these earlier guidelines, the following ten guidelines attempt to capture some of
the most basic ethical considerations special to BI when closely studying behaviour as
part of ANALYSIS. These can be summarised as:
 Seek ethical approvals and competencies where necessary. Use the ethical
review board or relevant authorities within which the behaviour is studied to grant
approval. If using a third party to conduct the study, this ethical responsibility
cannot be transferred. Ensure appropriate training to develop sufficient
competencies for data use and analysis.
 Consider what guidelines must be followed when studying behaviour up

close. These include collecting and documenting consent, revealing the purpose of
the study, ensuring participants are voluntarily participating and additional
safeguards when studying vulnerable populations.
 Only collect data that is necessary and ensure secure handling. Ensure that
those handling the data are properly instructed in the secure collection and
handling of data.
Table 2.5. Ethical guidelines for Stage 2: ANALYSIS
1. Seek ethical approval where necessary. For any non-casual study of behaviour, the team should, where necessary,
seek approval from the ethical review board associated with the team as well as from the authorities or other organisations
within which the behaviour studied unfolds. Also, remember that ethical responsibility cannot be transferred. If the team
commissions studies from other entities, it is the team’s responsibility to ensure that the ethical guidelines for ANALYSIS are
properly adhered to.
2. Ensure competency. Always ensure that those conducting observations, data analysis or any other kind of study or
experiment as part of ANALYSIS have received appropriate training and are sufficiently competent to actually safeguard
ethical guidelines and knowledge-based supervision in practice.
3. Collect and document consent. Remember that no research on a person may be carried out without the prior informed,
free, express, specific and documented consent of that person or their guardians. This also includes, insofar as is possible,
the purpose of the study (see also point 6). If consent has already been given to general collection of data, then consider
whether it is actually acceptable to make use of such prior consent.
4. Voluntary and anonymous participation. Always ensure when necessary that people asked to participate understand
that participation is voluntary and that the refusal to participate will not result in any consequences or any loss of benefits that
the person is otherwise entitled to receive. In addition, always make sure to anonymise participants to the furthest possible
extent, short of consent, and make clear to participants that this is done.
5. Additional safeguards for research with vulnerable populations. Special safeguards need to be in place for research
with vulnerable populations. Vulnerable populations include school children under the age of 18, people with learning or
communication difficulties, patients in hospital or people under the care of social services, people in custody or on probation,
and people engaged in illegal activities, such as drug abuse.
6. Refrain from deception. Parts of the behavioural sciences have a troubled past relationship with deception, for example,
deliberately making somebody believe something that is not true. The experience of deception in behavioural research may
have the potential to cause distress and harm and can make the recipients cynical about the activities and attitudes of
research and the institutions carrying out or sponsoring research. Always refrain from deception if possible and only make
use of deception if absolutely necessary, while ensuring approval by the ethical board as well as participating organisations
and after consulting appropriate resources such as the British Psychological Society’s Code of Human Research Ethics
(BPS, 2018), or the like.
7. Only collect what is necessary and ensure the secure handling of data. Studying behaviour makes for collecting a
wide range of data. Ensure that observational and other data generated as part of ANALYSIS is stored and handled safely as
well as that only data that is necessary to collect for the purpose at hand is collected.
8. Always provide contact information. If possible, always provide the name and contact details of the team member
leading the study as well as the name and contact details of another person who can receive enquiries about any matters,
which cannot be satisfactorily resolved with the member leading the study.
9. Always provide debriefing. After studying behaviour as part of ANALYSIS, always consider the possibility of debriefing
participants as the default when the data gathering is completed, especially where any deception or withholding of
information has taken place. When behaviour is studied more remotely, publishing an annual report which discloses previous
experiments or hosting a small section on the organisation’s website to disclose past experiments to interested members of
the public may suffice.
10. Always qualify the ANALYSIS. Make sure to collect relevant comments from participants on the results of ANALYSIS
whenever possible. Also, always consider the possibility of arranging for active dialogue and equal representation from
relevant citizens, groups and stakeholders when interpreting and reporting results.
Annex: Theoretical underpinnings of behavioural analysis
Dual-processing theories of reasoning, judgment and social cognition

The first and foremost principle for the practitioner to observe when seeking to
accommodate more traditional methodologies is perhaps the consequences that the
various versions of dual process theories, often adopted in BI (e.g. Kahneman’s System 1
System 2 theory), have for the constructs and phenomena studied.
Dual-process accounts are the result of seeking to understand the processes involved in
actual human reasoning, judgment and social cognition, especially when these do not
seem to reflect normative models of rational reasoning and choice. They have emerged
from largely disconnected literatures and experiments in cognitive and social psychology
(Evans, 2008) and received attention from the general public with Daniel Kahneman’s
popular intellectual autobiography Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) covering his work
with Amos Tversky’s, which led to Kahneman receiving a Nobel Prize in economics
(Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) in 2002
(shared with experimental economist Vernon L. Smith).
Dual process theories share the distinction between cognitive processes that are fast,
intuitive, automatic and, by and large, unconscious (System 1) and those that are slow,
deliberative and subject to conscious rule (System 2). Their main purpose is to study the
interplay of non-rational features, automatic processes and reflective reasoning aspiring to
the ideals of rationality (Gawronski, Sherman and Trope, 2014).
Table 2.6 summarises the clusters of attributes associated with dual systems accounts.
However, it should be carefully noted that dual process theories vary quite a lot,
especially when it comes to the kinds of System 1 processes described by different
theorists. Also, it is evident from the more detailed research that not all of the attributes
often sorted in dual process theories sensibly fits into this dual structure (Evans, 2008)
and that more complex structures such as Stanovich’s (2011) tripartite model of cognition
is necessary for dealing with phenomena where, for example, individuals’ responses are
observed to vary either within-subjects or between-subjects.
Thus, dual process accounts should always be treated as the simplifications they are, and
policymakers and practitioners will benefit immensely by orienting themselves with their
details and boundaries when addressing specific behaviour(s) and deeper questions. This
point is, for instance, evident when observing that while dual process theories often assert
that automatic processes do not require conscious awareness or intentions to work, more
detailed accounts make the qualification that such processes do not necessarily manifest
themselves as “subconscious” influences. Different from reflexes, then, the contours of
some biases may actually be observed by introspection as well as blocked by means of
self-regulation (Stanovich, 2012). This is important, both when considering individual
differences as well as ethics. Although some of the most memorable examples of bias are
memorable due to their non-conscious nature, such psychological phenomena should not
be mindlessly characterised as subconscious influences, as they often are.
Table 2.6. Clusters of attributes associated with dual systems of thinking
System 1 System 2
Cluster 1 (Consciousness)
Unconscious (preconscious) Conscious
Implicit Explicit
Automatic Controlled
Low effort High effort
Rapid Slow
High capacity Low capacity
Default process Inhibitory
Holistic, perceptual Analytic, reflective
Cluster 2 (Evolution)
Evolutionarily old Evolutionarily recent
Evolutionarily rationality Individual rationality
Shared with animals Uniquely human
Nonverbal Linked to language
Modular cognition Fluid intelligence
Cluster 3 (functional characteristics)
Associative Rule-based
Domain-specific Domain-general
Contextualised Abstract
Pragmatic Logical
Parallel Sequential
Stereotypical Egalitarian
Cluster 4 (Individual differences)
Universal Heritable
Independent of general intelligence Linked to general intelligence
Independent of working memory Limited by working memory capacity
Source: Reproduced from Evans, J.S.B. (2008), “Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social
cognition”, Annual Review Psychology, Vol. 59, pp. 255-278, www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annur
ev.psych.59.103006.093629.
Dual process theories have difficulties accounting for certain phenomena or detailed
findings, for example, individual differences in observed behaviour. Therefore,
practitioners may benefit from consulting more complex accounts of human reasoning,
judgment and social cognition, such as Stanovich’s Tripartite Model depicted here in the
context of considering individual differences in the observed choices between a smaller,
but present reward (USD 100 now) and a larger but future reward (USD 140 in 1 year). In
this context, it is often observed that while some individuals may be observed to choose
the smaller but present reward, others prefer the larger but future reward. Such individual
differences are often not random and thus important when considering why people act as
they do, as well as what BI strategies may effectively inform public policy in a given
situation.
Figure 2.11. Tripartite model of thinking
SYSTEM 2a
Reflective mind Initiate Reflection
“USD 100 now or USD 140 in one year?”
SYSTEM 2b
Block System 1 Algorithmic mind
Override
SYSTEM 1
Response
Autonomous mind
“USD 100 now!”
Source: Stanovich, K. (2009), What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought, Yale
University Press.
Returning to the main point about BI and the nature of dual process theories, it is by
identifying processes according to the simplified distinctions of dual process, or more
complex but similar theories, that BI seeks to explain how the supposedly irrelevant
features of decision-making contexts may systematically influence human decision-
making and behaviour to produce cognitive biases. In particular, it should be noted that
such biases are defined as systematic behavioural deviations from the predictions of
rational models. A cognitive bias, then, is a tendency for people to systematically produce
an output behaviour Y’, rather than the behaviour Y predicted by the rational model
provided an input variable X, and where the deviation between Y and Y’ is explained by
reference to cognitive features as described, e.g. by dual process theories.
Cognitive biases, heuristics and BI

However, a general shortcoming of the current BI literature is that cognitive biases are
often misunderstood, under-described and conflated with behavioural insights.
To see this, it should be recalled here that the concept of behaviour in BI is not that of our
everyday understanding but a theoretical conceptualisation of a (potential) decision point.
This means, that by “behaviour” is not necessarily meant an overt and observable
behaviour, but rather anything that can be modelled as a decision point, which in turn
means that any response which is (potentially) subject to self-regulation (System 2)
counts as behaviour. Thus, behaviours include: what to attend to, how to form beliefs,
what to choose, whether to stick to one’s choices and any other response that constitutes a
counterfactual event conditional on volition.
Next, recall that a cognitive bias, as defined above, is a systematic tendency for behaviour
to deviate from the predictions of rational models due to cognitive mechanisms. This
means that a cognitive bias merely describes a systematic relationship between an input
variable and an output behaviour said to deviate from the predictions of rational models
due to cognitive features, without necessarily being specific about what cognitive
mechanism translates input to output. When all references to cognitive mechanisms are
dropped in the description, there is a tendency to refer to it as an “effect”, for instance,
“the default effect”.
Figure 2.12. The basic schema for explaining rather than just describing a behavioural effect
Input variable Cognitive mechanism Output behaviour
Yet, it is a common misunderstanding to refer to one or more cognitive biases to explain a

given behaviour. This is a misunderstanding since cognitive biases do not explain
behavioural biases unless they make reference to the specific psychological mechanisms
thought to translate an input variable into a behavioural effect (Smets, 2018). For some,
this might just appear to be an academic detail. However, without a mechanistic
explanation and evidence for this, the practitioner not only fails to provide an explanation
of why people act as they do. They will also be ineffective in forming hypotheses about
what behavioural strategies might influence people, as well as be incapable of interpreting
the effect of tests and interventions (Marchionni and Reijula, 2019); and thus, finally also,
unable to know whether a given proposal for policy will be effective, robust, persistent or
welfare-improving when scaled or generalised (Grüne-Yanoff, 2016).
Figure 2.13. How psychological theory fits into the schema for explaining a cognitive bias
System 2a System 2b
Reflective mind Algorithmic mind
Input variable Output behaviour

System 1
Autonomous mind
?
Cognitive
mechanism
Referring to a “heuristic” provides one type of attempt to describe the “mechanics of the
mind” that provides such translation. Consider, for instance, Tversky and Kahneman
(1974) account of the adjustment and anchoring heuristic state that: “In many situations,
people make estimates by starting from an initial value that is adjusted to yield the final
answer. The initial value, or starting point, may be suggested by the formulation of the
problem, or it may be the result of a partial computation. In either case, adjustments are
typically insufficient”. The takeaway for the practitioner is that, to explain why people act
as they do, one needs to account for the relationship between an input variable and an
output behaviour, as well as for the cognitive mechanism mediating the two.
The structure of behavioural insights

Finally, the concept of cognitive biases or behavioural effects is often used
interchangeably with the concept of behavioural insights. Yet, in doing this, behavioural
insights become under-described. This is because successfully applying BI analytically as
well as strategically requires more than just an understanding of the relationship between:
1) an input variable; and 2) a behavioural effect. In particular, there are at least
seven additional components that go into a behavioural insight in order for it to be
applicable to the real world. These are as follows:
3) Mediators. As just asserted, a mechanism needs to be asserted as a mediator to provide
a behavioural insight. For instance, a default effect may result from different mechanisms,
for example, due to inattention, its normative signal or its reduction of friction
(Grüne-Yanoff, 2016). Each of these mechanisms, in turn, constitutes different
behavioural insights and cannot just be subsumed by the practitioner under one heading.
4), 5), 6) Situational, Individual and Social Moderators. What psychologists refer to as,
moderators, also need to be included as part of a behavioural insight as well (Van Kleef
and Van Trijp, 2018). Moderators are variables that influence the strength of a
relationship between the input variable and the output behaviour. What moderators obtain
relative to a behavioural insight depends upon the level of abstraction at which an insight
is formulated. While some moderators pertain to cognitive bias and its effect on a general
level, others pertain to more specific applications.
For simplifying purposes, BASIC divides moderators into three groups: situational,
individual and social moderators. An individual moderator is, for instance, people not
falling for the trickery question of “How many animals did Moses bring on the Ark”,
because they know of the Moses Illusion; a situational moderator is, for instance, people
not eating less even when given smaller plates, because they are hungry; and finally, a
social moderator is, for instance, young people not being influenced by “nine-out-of-ten”
social proofs, because they do not want to be mainstream.
7) Boundary conditions. Some of the more popularised parts of BI literature may give the
practitioner the impression that cognitive limitations, biases, heuristics and habits
influence people’s behaviour unconditionally. For instance, if social proof exists or is
provided, people will mindlessly follow this. However, this is not the case.
While moderators are variables that influence the strength of a relationship between the
input variable and the output behaviour, behavioural insights also have boundary
conditions. That is, a cognitive mechanism will only translate an input variable into a
behavioural effect conditional on certain conditions being satisfied. For instance, in one
experiment, all but one conference participants accepted a default in the terms and
conditions of the conference formula stating that they would be willing to wear a clown
nose throughout the conference. Needless to say, they only “accepted” this because of
inattention. The default effect, the acceptance, was thus brought about conditional on
inattention and did not affect the single attentive person which, of course, declined.
Consequently, to know when a behavioural insight might explain behaviour, as well as to
know when to expect a behavioural insight to influence behaviour, the practitioner needs
to know its boundary conditions. In fact, as will be evident below, boundary conditions
are crucial in BASIC since the ABCD framework for structuring ANALYSIS is based on
four broad categories of such conditions as Attention, Belief formation, Choice and
Determination.
8) Potential side effects. The potential side effects of cognitive limitations, biases,
heuristics and habits when influencing people’s behaviour are also an important part of a
behavioural insight. Take, for instance, the default effect by inattention. A side effect of
this is that people do not know that they have been opted into the default conditions. In
this way, a practitioner’s knowledge about potential side effects may play a crucial role
both when seeking to understand why people act as they do, the consequences of using a
behavioural insight as a strategy to influence people’s behaviour, as well as to identify
important ethical issues.
9) Evidence. Finally, part of a behavioural insight is knowledge about the evidential base
underpinning it. This includes the kinds of populations that this has been tested within
(e.g. university students and employees), experimental designs (RCT, quasi-experiment,
cross-sectional, longitudinal, etc.) and type of study, e.g. proof of principle (laboratory
experiments), proof of practice (field experiments) and proof of policy (implementation
studies). For this latter distinction, see Figure 2.14 below adapted from Van Kleef and
Van Trijp ( 2018).
Figure 2.14. From “proof of concept” to proof of implementation in studies on effectiveness

of nudging
Increasing external validity
Proof of principle Proof of practice Proof of policy
Laboratory experiments Field experiments Implementational studies

Usually designed to understand and Usually designed to document the Usually designed to document long-
investigate behavioural effects and their effectiveness and efficacy of applying term effectiveness, generalisability and
underlying psychological mechanisms behavioural insights in the real world individual, social & situational variances
Increasing internal validity
Source: Van Kleef, E. and H.C. van Trijp (2018), “Methodological challenges of research in nudging”,
in Methods in Consumer Research, Vol. 1, pp. 329-349, Woodhead Publishing.
Figure 2.15. Summarising a behavioural insight
Individual Situational Social

moderators moderators moderators
Cognitive Output
Input variable
mechanism behaviour
Boundary Evidential Potential

conditions base side-effects
In conclusion, a (theoretical, not methodological) behavioural insight ideally comprises

knowledge about nine components in total. Needless to say, the BI literature cannot
always provide knowledge about all nine components and may also disagree as to their
proper descriptions. Yet, the diagram below provides a template for practitioners to
structure information about behavioural insights for analytical and strategic purposes
alike.
Note
1
Italics refer to behavioural strategies developed in Stage 3: STRATEGIES.
Stage 3: STRATEGIES – BI for behaviour change
Stage 3: STRATEGIES
Stages 1 and 2 focused on conducting a BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS of target behaviours

relevant for addressing the policy problem. Stage 3: STRATEGIES aims to identify
behavioural insights that might be effective for informing behaviourally informed
strategies using ABCD that might effectively change target behaviours and can be tested
in the subsequent stage of INTERVENTION. In the stage STRATEGIES, the policymaker and
practitioner working with them will:
1. Identify classes of strategies and behavioural insights that match the behavioural
analysis of the behavioural problem(s) conducted in Stages 1 and 2.
2. Conceptualise a suitable intervention based on the relevant strategies and insights,
and which might be tested for their efficiency.
3. Screen these interventions with regard to ethics, feasibility and costs.
When
STRATEGIES have always been an unavoidable step in any BI project. However, what
makes BASIC different from other frameworks is the “diagnostic link” between the
BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS of the two first stages and the third stage of STRATEGIES. Thus,
this stage is only to be engaged with when a behavioural analysis has been conducted.
BASIC ties the BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS to STRATEGIES by using ABCD.
Milestone
The milestone of STRATEGIES is to arrive at a suitable and acceptable policy intervention
that has been ethically approved and passes a positive cost assessment. When such a
policy intervention has been formulated on the basis of ABCD, the practitioner may take
the BI project to the next stage: INTERVENTION.
This stage accomplishes two key important tasks for implementing a BI project. First, as
mentioned in the introduction, the use of behavioural insights as active components, for
instance nudges, in public policy interventions should be regarded as a core tenet of what
is usually referred to as behaviourally informed public policy. Yet while BI does have a
strong focus on the application of BI as part of nudge interventions (OECD, 2017), it is
important to emphasise that BI is not limited to this type of approach. The development,
design and delivery of behaviourally informed public policy also comprise approaches
such as “push”, “curling” and “boost” as well.
Second, classes of insights and specific behavioural insights are presented for each of the
four aspects explained in Stage 2: ANALYSIS, including selected cases to illustrate their
uses. Twelve strategies with respective insights are presented. In this way, the ABCD
framework also presents itself as a repository for systematically matching behavioural
analyses with behavioural strategies that present themselves as the basis for designing
policies likely to effectively and gently influence target behaviours.
In STRATEGIES, the policymaker and BI practitioner working with them aimed to identify,
conceptualise and design behaviourally informed strategies conditional on the hypotheses
generated in the BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS about what seems to cause a behavioural
problem. This is possible, as each diagnostic domain is associated with BI strategies,
which in turn comprises classes of behavioural insights along which policy interventions
may be designed.
Attention – Make it relevant, seize attention and plan for (in)attention

Attention is the window of the mind and thus the starting point of all behaviour. Hence it
is also a natural starting point both in ANALYSIS and STRATEGIES. In addition, while
attention is scarce, easily distracted, quickly overwhelmed and subject to switching costs,
practitioners will often find that attentional issues have been overlooked in the design and
implementation of traditional public policies. For this reason, behavioural problems are
often partially caused by attentional issues and it may thus prove effective to revise and
design policy interventions so that they become more relevant, seize attention and, if this
is not possible, think about how to plan for inattention.
Make it relevant
A prerequisite for working effectively with attention to creating a behavioural effect is
that one engages with people in a relevant way – that is, at the right time, at the right
place and at the point where people are most willing to enact the behaviour that one aims
to promote. This can be done by carefully considering the following insights.
Visceral factors: Ability and motivation are not constants (Loewenstein, 1996). If you
are hungry, you are more likely to eat bad food and make bad decisions. If you are tired,
you are more likely to make mistakes, make worse decisions and eat bad food. Thinking
about, and even influencing, people’s state-of-mind relative to visceral factors and
calibrating policy interventions with this in mind throughout ABCD can increase the
likelihood that people will behave in the direction of what the policy is trying to promote.
Taking visceral factors into account in planning when a policy intervention is to make
contact with people’s attentional capacities is, therefore, a crucial strategy. However,
before even thinking about applying this strategy by influencing people’s state-of-mind
relative to visceral factors, please consult the ethical guidelines at the end of this chapter,
as these are exclusively their private arena and should only be influenced to boost their
capacity for autonomous decision-making.
Timing: It is everything. People feel more positive in the morning than in the afternoon
(Pink, 2018). Asking people to commit well in advance to something sensible (e.g. eating
fruit rather than cake) make them more likely to commit, asking them the day before
makes them less likely to commit (Read, Loewenstein and Kalyanaraman, 1999). Asking
people to take out insurance on water damage is more likely after flooding than before;
and offering farmers to purchase fertiliser at the right time may have the same impact as a
50% monetary subsidy (Duflo, Kremer and Robinson, 2011). Thus, timing is intimately
connected with visceral factors and, to some sense, may be regarded as one of the former
concept’s dimensions. However, thinking timing into the details of a policy intervention
also has a more practical dimension. Fines and charges may be timed relative to when
people receive their pay check in order to increase the likelihood of payment, reminders
may be timed so as to be most likely to prompt action, for example, timing text-message
alerts just-in-time to avoid overdraft (Adams et al., 2018) and deadlines may be
co-ordinated with other events so as to increase the likelihood of people meeting them.
Placement: An overlooked dimension of making a policy intervention relevant is
placement. Yet, as revealed by the strategies applied by supermarkets, placement is
crucial when trying to influence, not only choices (see Arrangements below) but also
behaviour. Still, failure to get people’s attention at the place which is optimally calibrated
with action is a standard issue in many behavioural problems – in supermarkets and
policies alike: at which place are teenagers more likely to buy condoms; at the cash
register in the supermarket or from a vending machine outside? Likewise, moving
sanitisers in front of the door, rather than having them hanging on the wall increases hand
hygiene, whether at the hospital or at a restaurant buffet. Moving blood-screening tests
for diabetes and pre-diabetes that require fasting to the Mosque and timing it with
Ramadan leads many more to take the test (OECD, 2017). So where do you put the new
data-protection policy next time? – in an email that will get ignored, or at the bathroom at
work where people are surprisingly fond of reading long texts. Examples like these
abound and emphasise the importance of considering placement in policy implementation
– some places are public, others private; some places are close to the action to be
promoted, others are far away. Practitioners should not forget this third dimension of
relevancy.
In sum “make it relevant” includes, at least, three variables – timing, placement and
visceral factors – which are relevant when designing and implementing policies. Getting
“the principle of relevance” right is a precondition to making the best use of people’s
attention.
Seize attention
The fundamental problem of inattention is, not surprisingly, that people usually fail to
attend to what is important in a given context. This may happen even when policy
interventions have been calibrated with visceral factors, timing and placement. Whether
because they forget or overlook something, and whether this is due to relegating,
multitasking or being distracted, focusing on one thing implies by definition that one is
not paying attention to something else. Thus, policymakers and practitioners should
carefully consider how to design the details of policy interventions so that people attend
to what is important at that given moment for the intervention to succeed. There are at
least three ways to do this using the following insights.
Salience: The salience concept denotes a feature of choice architecture – whether of a

decision point, a choice option or an attribute of choice options – that draws in our
attention relative to surrounding objects, information, events or options, at the expense of
other features. A salience-based nudge is any attempt to influence people’s attentional
systems in a particular situation with the intention of activating, guiding or retaining
focus on a particular aspect of the choice architecture by making that aspect salient.
Usually, this type of influence is conducted in order to make such an aspect the object of
conscious processes, i.e. System 2 thinking. Said differently, the aim of salience-based
nudges is to guide what people are attending to – as well as not attending to – playing on
non-rational psychological features of cognition. When it comes to the behavioural aspect
of attention treated here, the relevant sense of salience is that of getting people to notice at
some decision point that they are being asked to make a choice – the latter two senses of
salience will be treated as aspects of “choice” (see perspectives below). There are many
ways that researchers and practitioners can make a decision point salient. Most famous,
perhaps, is the engraving of silhouettes of flies into the urinals of Schiphol Airport in
Amsterdam (NLD), which purportedly reduced spillage by 80% and cleaning costs by 8%
(Evans-Pritchard, 2013). Also, digital speed signs in traffic that flash when drivers are
speeding and have been seen to decrease average speed. Another example would be to
make litter bins in Copenhagen salient by using stickers of green footprints leading to
bins, which was measured to significantly decrease street litter.
Reminders: Another way of getting people to notice that they are being asked to make a
choice at some decision point is by using reminders. The use of reminders is a very
similar principle to that of making decision points salient. Yet, it distinguishes itself by
causing a behavioural effect by means of an explicit messenger and the triggering of an
association in memory making it structurally a bit more complex – a feature that has
bearings relative to the possibilities for designing reminders (see, for example, Messenger
effect and Create commitments below) as well as ethical bearings (see Ethical guidelines,
at the end of this chapter). Reminders are becoming increasingly relevant due to increased
digitisation and, especially in health, the potential of this principle has been documented.
Thus, a meta-review of reminders in health by Stubbs et al. (2012) found 7 studies of
reminders by letters which led to an average reduction in “did not attends” (DNAs) of
7.6% and 12 studies of reminders by text-messages which led to an average reduction in
DNAs of 8.6%. Likewise, the UK Financial Authorities has run a series of experiments
examining the detailed differential effects of reminders in this domain as well.
Prompts: You can seize attention simply by asking people to pay attention through
prompts. This is defined as making someone do something by interrupting their on-going
action and forcing them to make a decision before being able to proceed, as illustrated by
pop-up boxes on digital interfaces. Of course, this is an increasingly relevant principle
with increased digitisation. The Danish Business Authority, for instance, used a prompt to
try to get 14 000 companies to verify their basic data in the Danish Business Register,
with the result that approximately 66% either confirmed or updated their data in the
registry (OECD, 2017). However, the concept of prompts goes beyond digital platforms.
For instance, charities using “facers” on the streets asking for donations and hospitals
asking patients to fill out a survey while waiting for an appointment. Text messages can
also be designed to serve as both prompts and reminders. However, they only work when
they are made relevant (see above). Otherwise, people will disregard and reject prompts –
making prompts intuitively easy to dislike.1
Social attention: Finally, one may consider behavioural insights relative to social aspects
of attention. The cocktail-party effect refers to how people’s attention may be guided by
semantic content such as when hearing one’s name being mentioned at a cocktail party
leading one, but not other people, to direct their attention to the source. This principle has,
for instance, been used to optimise boarding of planes by seizing the attention of
travellers from particular countries to pay attention to specific procedures by placing their
national flag at counters where paperwork needs to be carried out. The spotlight effect
refers to how people tend to think that other people focus on the same contextual features
and options as they themselves are. The principle is integrated into digital speed signs in
traffic that flash when drivers are speeding. This has been measured to decrease the
average speed of drivers by not only making them aware that they are speeding but that
other people may observe this as well. Finally, the use of pictures of eyes to create
artificial social monitoring also belongs to this category. Thus, depicting posters with
eyes has been used in a range of interventions to effect people into acting pro-socially by
giving them the sense that what they are attending to are attended to by others as well.
Plan for inattention

If facing an attentional problem, it may also prove effective just to plan for inattention.
That is, it may often prove more effective to rely upon people not attending to the issue at
hand – either because attention will always fail at some point or because it makes no
sense that people need to devote their scarce attention to the issue. Hence examining what
happens when attention fails as part of the analysis and then planning and designing for
inattention is a central strategy in BI for dealing with attentional problems.
Defaults (by inattention): Perhaps the best-known and most effective behavioural
insight when planning for inattention is changing the default. In the complex choice
architectures of modern societies, we increasingly rely on defaults, or “pre-set choices”,
to decide for us, when we do not have the time or capacity to attend to the vast array of
choices available. We print our notes for the upcoming meeting relying on the printer to
choose a readable format; we buy a phone relying on the producer to have suitable
defaults balancing between protecting our privacy and providing us with personalised
services; and we participate in default retirement plans, believing that someone took the
proper time to construct the right configuration of investment choices. To some extent,
being able not to attend to every possible choice but just rely on defaults is a necessary
strategy for us to focus on what is really important in our lives.
A default is defined as an aspect of choice architecture, where one particular choice
option is chosen as the pre-set choice such that people have to make an active decision to
choose an alternative choice option. Said a bit differently, a default is the option that
occurs when people do not make a choice (Johnson et al., 2002). A default effect as the
change in the likelihood that a particular alternative is chosen when designated as the
default versus a control condition when no default is designated (Brown and Krishna,
2004). This definition, however, does not point to the responsible mechanism.
Consequently, a default effect may be described more precisely by referencing and
distinguishing between what cognitive mediator or mechanism that brings it about (i.e. as
any behavioural effect caused by a default through a mediator) rather than in purely
consequential terms. For policy purposes, it is important to distinguish between various
types of default effects according to the cognitive mechanisms that bring them about, as
well as the systems that condition them (Dinner et al., 2011). In the most basic type of
default effect, people may end up with the default option simply because they do not
notice at the decision point that they are being asked to make a choice (see Johnson et al.,
2002). We refer to this as “inattention-based default effect”.
Despite the increasing importance of defaults in our lives, studies show that they are too
often badly aligned – sometimes by intention, other times due to negligence – with
individual and societal preferences. When this happens, the consequences are grave as
defaults effectively materialise as soon as we are inattentive. As a consequence, getting
the arrangement of defaults right and preventing misuse of defaults is a core principle of
BI whenever people are simply inattentive. Two examples can be found in Box 2.8.
Box 2.8. Two cases of planning for inattention with default
1. The European Commission action to counter the misuse of defaults

In 2009 and 2011, the European Commission (EC) launched a series of steps to protect
consumers against emerging speculation in default effects, especially by online
businesses.
In 2009, Microsoft was charged with abusing its prolonged market dominance on the
market for PCs to tie its online browser “Internet Explorer” as a default browser. As a
consequence, Microsoft had gained close to a monopoly on the market for browsers
(more 90% of PCs on the market had Internet Explorer installed). In 2009, the EC forced
Microsoft to install a programme that prompted users to make an active choice between
the 12 most popular browsers on the market (European Commission, 2009).
The new programme was highly successful. Between March 2010 and November 2010,
the new programme led to 84 million browsers being downloaded. After that, Microsoft
failed to comply with its commitment by not providing the browser choice screen with its
Windows 7 Service Pack 1, from February 2011 until July 2012. This led to a historic
EUR 561 million fine of Microsoft by the European Commission (2013).
In 2011, the EC began an effort to protect consumers against the widespread speculation
in attention-based default effects carried out by the emerging online industry. Their first
target was the widespread misuse of pre-ticked boxes on websites for charging inattentive
consumers additional payments (for example, when buying plane tickets online). The EC
thus decided to ban the use of pre-ticked boxes as part of marketing beginning in 2014
(European Commission, 2014).
2. Rutgers University’s paper-saving changes to printer defaults
A typical illustration of an attention-based default effect for a simple, non-dynamic
decision task with only two alternatives is people’s tendency to stick with printers’
default setting. They do this even when they have prior information about what the
default is, as well as hold preferences aligned with the often-recommended course of
action, i.e. double-sided printing. Thus, this effect creates a generic behavioural problem
causing vast overconsumption of printing paper.
To solve this problem, traditional public policymakers have at times resorted to
suggesting an environmental tax on paper products. In 2012, for instance, the Swedish
Nature Conservation Association (Naturskyddsförening) suggested a 10% tax on all paper
products in Sweden. The projected effect of such a tax was a 2% reduction in paper
consumption, equalling 12 km2 of saved forests and SEK 2 billion in taxes a year
(Axelsson and Åström, 2012).
However, an intervention at Rutgers University (USA) in 2008 illustrates the simple and
cheap alternative provided by BI: changing the default from single- to double-sided
printing. Doing so on its 3 university campuses reduced paper consumption by 44%. Over
the next 3 years, the university added further behavioural principles and estimated that
they saved approximately 55 million pieces of printing paper, equalling saving 4 650
trees (Sunstein and Reisch, 2013; Cho, 2013).
Sources: European Commission (2009), “Antitrust: Commission accepts Microsoft commitments to give
users browser choice”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm (accessed on
7 November 2018); European Commission (2013), “Antitrust: Commission fines Microsoft for non-
compliance with browser choice commitments”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-
196_en.htm (accessed on 7 November 2018); European Commission (2014), “Taking consumer rights into
the digital age: over 507 million citizens will benefit as of today”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-14-655_en.htm (accessed on 7 November 2018); Axelsson, S. and K. Åström (2012), Everyone
Earns a Paper Fee, https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/nyheter/alla-tjanar-pa-en-pappersavgift (accessed
on 7 November 2018); Sunstein, C. and L. Reisch (2013), “Green by default”, Kyklos, Vol. 66/3, pp. 398-402,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12028; Cho, R. (2013), Making Green Behavior Automatic, https://blogs.ei.col
umbia.edu/2013/05/23/making-green-behavior-automatic/ (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Safety mechanisms: In some instances, the consequences of inattention may be

re-directed by physical mechanisms quite similar to procedural choice architectural
defaults. This is, for instance, the case for safety lines when conducting dangerous work,
dead-man-buttons and electricity wires that automatically de-plugs or turn off when one
trips in them. Such physical arrangements are very similar to defaults, but are
distinguished from defaults and referred to as safety mechanisms.
Conclusion: How to address (in)attention

How to work with the attentional aspects of behavioural problems is rarely at the centre
of the development, design and delivery of public policies. Yet, as was seen above with
regards to hand hygiene and testing for diabetes, applying BI to the attentional aspect of
public policy implementation can make the difference between failure and success.
However, the attentional aspect of behaviour can also inform the very structure of the
policy intervention pursued. This was referenced by the timing of an intervention for
offering fertilisers to farmers in Kenya – there, timing (together with commitment to the
offer) proved just as efficient as a 50% subsidy.
Consequently, the attentional aspect of behaviour is not just something to think about at
the very end of the policy cycle but should be done from the outset when attention is part
of the problem as well as the solution. Thinking about how to make public policy
interventions relevant, seizing the attention of those engaging in the target behaviour and
making plans for how to deal with inattention is a cornerstone in applying BI to public
policy.
Belief formation – Guide search, make inferences intuitive and support

judgment
Analysing problems in belief formation and devising strategies relative to this aspect of
behaviour comprises the second cornerstone of the ABCD model for identifying relevant
strategies when applying BI to public policy. The following examples illustrate how
practitioners may use strategies such as guide search, making inference intuitive and
supporting judgment to mitigate issues in belief formation.
Guide search
While there is no such thing as too much information in a traditional public policy
perspective, information overload has become a serious problem for the people inhabiting
the real world. In this, there is such a thing as too much information and complexity, but
too little time to search and process this when in search of answers. For that reason,
problems in belief formation usually go hand in hand with the vast amounts of
information and possibilities that are put on offer.
In this perspective, it is not surprising to find that some of the biggest companies today
are companies built around information search engines and consumer comparison
platforms. What is perhaps more surprising is that traditional public policy interventions
with regards to problems of belief formation have been slow in copying what these
companies do well, but instead often try to approach problems in belief formation by
offering even more information. Practitioners can help guide citizens more effectively
when facing vast information sets by applying the following insights in policy design and
delivery.
Searching by aspects (SBA): One such principle is searching by aspects (SBA). SBA is
a development of a decision-making model or heuristic originally described by Amos
Tversky (1972), as elimination by aspects (EBA). This model of decision-making applies
when people face too many options to choose from. It works by first identifying the
single attribute or feature, i.e. an aspect that is deemed primary or most important. This
aspect is then used to partition the set of options in those options that possess the primary
feature or attribute and those that do not – discarding or eliminating the latter from
consideration. The process is then iterated by identifying a secondary or next-most
important aspect and reducing the set of options further according to this, and so on, until
the set of options to be considered is either manageable or only consist of one object.
While EBA is usually thought of as a decision-making heuristic, digitisation has led to it
being applied just as much as a principle in information search incorporated into various
search engine functions. Think for instance of sites where consumers may search for
travels, hotels, dates or clothing. Here consumers may quickly and easily find their way,
for example, to a manageable set of hotels to consider from amongst millions of options
by first eliminating by the aspect of the city they are visiting, then adding the days they
are interested in, then adding a price range, and so on. In this role, EBA is used to filter
through large information sets rather than help to make a choice; this is why it may also
be referred to as the principle of “searching by aspects”.
SBA has proven useful to guide citizens through complex informational sets in public
institutions. Thus, in many digitised countries, citizens efficiently search for anything
from job openings, over juridical documents, to public services like medical clinics,
doctor’s offices or dentists, in search systems based on SBA.
Question trees: Another way to help people find their way around vast and complex sets
of information is by applying decision trees to guide information searches. A decision
tree is a decision-making tool that uses a branching structure to model sequences of
decisions onto their possible consequences so as to allow for analysis. When used as an
information-search tree, the same structure is used, but now as a Q&A based tool to guide
users to the right answer – hence the label “question trees”. The technique has been
implemented extensively in call centres, where it provides a structured approach for front-
staff to effectively identify the problems that callers have.
One of its first technological implementation was as part of automated telephone-systems
(“press 1 for English”) guiding the caller to the right service section. Recently, it has also
been applied to help guide citizens by their own devices to the kind of information or
options needed when interacting with public bodies. In 2013, for instance, the Danish
Business Authorities together with iNudgeyou tested the efficiency of a question-tree
procedure in getting newly started business owners to correctly identify the type of
company (amongst some 140+ types) they needed to register to conform to existing rules
and regulations. In a small, randomised controlled trial, it was found that a question tree
reduced the number of business registrations with errors in them by 43% (from 35% to
20%). Likewise, the United Kingdom (UK) government has implemented digital question
trees as a tool on a range of sites. For example, if someone wants to check if they have the
right to work in the UK, they can access the site https://www.gov.uk/legal-right-work-uk
and press start. After answering a short series of easy questions, you are told whether you
are entitled to work in the UK, what documents to bring/obtain and/or which authorities
to contact. The one-minute experience of going through the questions makes you baffle at
the ease with which you are led through an incredibly complex set of laws and
requirements to arrive at the exact information needed (UK Government, n.d.).
Make it intuitive
One thing is being guided to an answer by behavioural insights when navigating vast and
complex amounts of information, such as when trying to register a business or find out
what documents are needed to obtain a work permit. Another thing is to navigate those
complex systems and technologies themselves that a modern world makes available.
After all, humans co-evolved for millennia with nature but the pace at which
technological developments occur is too fast for human evolution to keep up with. Still,
this leaves humans to struggle with understanding and remembering how the systems,
environments and objects that surround them at work, in the interaction with public
bodies and in the marketplace function.
To this end, the traditional approach has relied heavily on information, instructions and
training. In contrast, BI has from the outset explored areas such as human factors
(Wickens, Gordon and Liu, 1998) and user-centric design (Norman, 1988), though with a
stronger emphasis on the psychology and experimental tests than these disciplines usually
exercise, in the search for principles to apply in the pursuit of providing better and more
effective regulation. Perhaps in this area, more than any other, BI becomes an applied
approach in the literal sense. To do this, the practitioner may want to use the following
insights.
Intuitive coding: A broad concept referring to the idea of construing information,
environments and objects so that people intuitively form appropriate beliefs using
System-1 thinking. For example, a light switch may be designed in a way so that users
intuitively form the correct idea of how to use it by, for example, flipping it up and down
or turning a knob left or right. While the design of light switches is not particularly
important for public policy, the idea of intuitive coding may be crucial for the construal
of “user interfaces” in public policy.
At the most practical end of the spectrum, we find examples like the Lake Shore Drive in
Chicago, where a tight turn makes it one of the city’s most dangerous curves. Trying to
limit accidents, in September 2006 the city painted a series of white lines perpendicular to
travelling cars such that the lines get progressively narrower as drivers approach the
sharpest point of the curve (see Figure 2.16). This creates the illusion of speeding up,
which – by hypothesis – should make drivers lift the foot from the speeder to compensate
for possible illusions of control and overconfidence. The result: there were 36% fewer
crashes in the 6 months after the lines were painted compared to the same 6-month period
the year before (September 2006 to March 2007 and September 2005 to March 2006)
(Nudge blog, 2010).
Figure 2.16. Aerial photo of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago
Source: Nudge blog (2010), Measuring the LSD Effect: 36 Percent Improvement, http://nudges.org/?s=lake+s
hore+drive (accessed on 7 November 2018).
In the United Kingdom, researchers tried to incorporate behavioural insights into the user-
centred design of an inpatient prescription chart to study how changes in the content and
design of prescription charts could influence prescribing behaviour and reduce
prescribing errors. The changes included having doctors circle “microgram”, “mg”, “g”
or other units, rather than writing it to avoid misreading (see Figure 2.17). In a simulated
context, the chart significantly reduced the number of common prescribing errors
including dosing errors and illegibility without education or support, suggesting some
common prescription writing errors are potentially rectifiable simply through changes in
the content and design of prescription charts (King et al., 2014).
Figure 2.17. Intuitively-coded prescription forms
Source: King, D. et al. (2014), “Redesigning the ‘choice architecture’ of hospital prescription charts: A mixed
methods study incorporating in situ simulation testing”, http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005473.
Mental models: Mental models are psychological representations of real, hypothetical or

imaginary situations. In particular, a mental model is a category, concept, identity,
prototype, stereotype, causal narrative or larger worldview that helps people make sense
of the world. Mental models capture broad ideas about how the world works and one’s
place in it. They are thus structures that enable as well as constrain the ways people
interpret their surroundings and understand themselves. In doing so, they cause people to
ignore certain pieces of information and fill in missing information where needed. Mental
models are automatically triggered by contextual cues – models of the mind that provide
us with default assumptions about the people we interact with and the situations we face
(World Bank, 2015).
Public policy itself depends upon mental models. A central claim of this report has been
that the rational model of human agency has directed and constrained traditional public
policy. An even more fundamental claim made here is that the rational model is not well
adapted to inform public policy when it comes to behavioural problems. Instead, it
suggests an alternative mental model in the form of dual process theories to inform the
development, design and delivery of public policy. The shift from the rational model to
the dual process cognitive theory or model of human behaviour is but one example of the
potentials that may come from changing the mental models that people use to make sense
of the world. Whether such changes succeed may depend on institutional changes but the
behavioural sciences have also shown that mental models may be changed by exposing
people to alternative ways of thinking and to new role models in real life as well as in
fiction.
The World Bank (2015) describes how certain groups of disadvantaged people in
Ethiopia have been observed to hold beliefs that they could not change their future,
thereby constraining their abilities to see the opportunities they might have. Researchers
invited a randomly selected group of villagers to watch inspirational documentaries in
which individuals from the region described how they had improved their socio-economic
positions by setting goals. A survey conducted six month later found that viewing the
documentaries had increased aspirations and brought about small changes in participants
behaviour such as increased savings and investing more resources in their children’s
schooling (Tanguy et al., 2014)
While the case from Ethiopia describes the strategy of changing the mental model used
by people, one may also use BI to change systems so that they conform to mental models.
Citizens, for instance, usually spend more time on other sites and platforms than those
provided by public bodies. Hence, adjusting information architecture and layout on public
websites to the mental models that people have picked up more broadly may significantly
improve the functionality and experience of the service.
Support judgment
People still need to make judgments. That is, they need to infer new beliefs from
pre-existing beliefs. In doing this, people rely on an array of simplifying heuristics that
allow them to draw inferences that often but not always serve as reliable and cost-
effective shortcuts for processing information. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) famously
identified three heuristics – availability, representativeness and anchoring and
adjustment – influencing human judgment. As the list of such heuristics is becoming
increasingly long and varied due to the rapid progress of the behavioural sciences, the
following exposition is limited to illustrating three out of several possible principles for
applying BI to support people in making judgments.
Utilising heuristics: When it comes to behavioural insights strategies, the principle of
utilising heuristics means that researchers and practitioners tap into heuristics so as to
promote a particular belief being formed. Needless to say, one should think twice about
using this principle on ethical grounds. Yet, considering what heuristics will play a part in
forming beliefs in a specific context and designing policy interventions to match, rather
than conflict with these, is usually only appropriate. Here we use the messenger effect to
illustrate the principle.
The messenger effect is a robust effect where people judge the truth or likelihood of a
message according to the perceived credibility of the messenger. The UK launched the
“Healthy Buddy” scheme, whereby older students received healthy living lessons from
their school teachers and then acted as peer teachers to deliver these lessons to younger
“buddies”. Compared with a control group, both the older and younger “buddies”
enrolled in the “Healthy Buddy” scheme showed an increase in healthy living knowledge
as well as in their behaviour and weight (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2010).
Adapting to heuristics: A persistent criticism of the literature on and application of bias
and heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts or intuitive judgments) relative to judgment is that
this perceives bias and heuristics as fundamentally flawed reasoning (Gigerenzer, 1991).
Proponents of this criticism have argued that biases and heuristics should rather be
conceived of as adaptive forms of reasoning, that while not conforming to the rules of
rationality or formal logic, presents efficient heuristics in an uncertain world, as long as
the information is presented in a way that allows for their relevant application.
For instance, both lay people and professionals often have problems calculating the
probability of an event occurring based on knowledge of a related event (known as
Bayesian inferences). This results in the person typically committing what is referred to
as the base-rate fallacy, as noted above. Gigerenzer and colleagues have shown that
presenting risky decisions in terms of natural frequencies helps people, even fourth
graders, make Bayesian inferences correctly without help from instructors. Making sure
that information is presented in forms such as natural frequencies that fit cognitive
strategies or heuristics represents the principle of adapting to heuristics, so as to make use
of their efficiency in solving problems.
As an example of using the principle of adapting to heuristics as well as an example of
the approach to BI earlier labelled “Boost”, Drexler et al. (2014) have shown the benefit
of providing instruction, practice and training in financial decision-making skills. In their
study, they provided micro-entrepreneurs in the Dominican Republic with simple
financial and accounting heuristics, which led to significant and economically meaningful
improvements in business practices and outcomes. In a different approach to adapting to
heuristics, a switch from showing fuel efficiency in the context of purchasing a new car in
terms of “miles per gallon” to showing “gallon per miles” have been shown to make the
benefits of greater fuel efficiency more transparent (Larrick and Soll, 2008).
Social proof: In the present context, social proof is regarded as pertaining to belief
formation and thus defined separately from social norms and peer pressure. Instead, it is
regarded as a social-psychological phenomenon where people look to the behaviour of
others in an attempt to make sense of the world. Social proof is triggered by uncertainty
about the state of the world in social contexts and driven by the belief that other people
possess knowledge about what is going on and aspects of their surroundings work. Social
proof thus represents a class of heuristics for forming beliefs based on the behaviour of
others and the assumption of an asymmetry in knowledge.
By highlighting or emphasising a positive behavioural norm, practitioners may support
judgment by “de-biasing” the existing misperception or, potentially, though usually not
ethically acceptable, encouraging the misperception that the positive behaviour is more
prevalent than it actually is, which may result in people adopting the positive behaviour.
This is in contrast to traditional public policy, which tends to emphasise negative or
problematic behaviour, which often leads to people making exaggerations about negative
or problematic behaviours that could easily lead to a misperception of how widespread
the problem is (Berkowitz and Perkins, 1987).
This principle of social proof has been applied to a series of behavioural problems during
the last couple of decades. For instance, it has been used to emphasise the actual
behaviour in relation to alcohol consumption amongst youths with the result of reducing
misperceptions as well as actual consumption for the youth provided the positive social
proof (Balgvig and Holmberg, 2014). Likewise, emphasising the actual use of seatbelts
amongst drivers has been shown not only to “de-bias” the misperception amongst drivers
about other people’s behaviour, but also show to lead more drivers to perceive the
behaviour as positive (Linkenbach and Perkins, 2003). Thus, the principle of social proof
offers a cheap and quite effective strategy that may act as support in people’s process of
judgment: always highlight the actual positive behaviour as people will take this into
account when making sense of the world in an uncertain situation.
Choice – Make it attractive, frame prospects and make it social

When making a choice is difficult, people are likely to be influenced by biases and
heuristics in their decision-making. ABCD suggests that practitioners look into making
preferable choices more attractive, use framing of prospects and leverage social identities
and norms.
Make it attractive
Attraction is the fundamental law of choice. In facing a set of choice options people opt
for what they find most attractive. But what makes a choice attractive and how may
practitioners use behavioural insights into this area to encourage people to make the best
choices? This is an issue that may be treated at length, but here two simple principles are
considered: how to connect with motives and perspectives, and how to trigger emotions.
Consider motives: Every choice has a motive. This motive can be either intrinsically or
extrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivation to perform an activity comes when one
receives no apparent reward except the activity itself; whereas, extrinsic motivation to
perform an activity comes from external rewards, such as money, commands and
promises of punishment. Motivational crowding theory suggests that providing extrinsic
incentives for certain behaviours can undermine the intrinsic motivation for that
behaviour. Considering how to connect with intrinsic motives, as well as determine how
potential extrinsic incentives will interact with these motives is a crucial exercise for
practitioners.
Intrinsic motives are, by nature, cheaper and more meaningful to people than extrinsic
motives. This is, for instance, well known from the voluntary work that millions of
citizens perform around the world. Hence, practitioners should always consider what
intrinsic motives might be identified and connected as drivers to the behaviour wanted.
From a rational choice perspective, these types of motivations can be reconciled by
offering extrinsic motivations, such as offering monetary incentives, to attract people to
the desired intrinsic choice. However, in a series of experiments and field trials, the
behavioural sciences have revealed that extrinsic incentives are not always reconcilable
with intrinsic motivation. Instead, motivational crowding theory suggests that providing
extrinsic incentives for certain behaviours can undermine the intrinsic motivation for that
behaviour. For instance, paying for a behaviour which previously has been voluntary,
such as blood donation, might reduce the willingness to enact that behaviour (Titmuss,
1970). In another instance, monetary compensation offered for a nuclear waste repository
in Switzerland lowered the willingness to accept the locally undesired project from 50.8%
to 24.6%. About one-quarter of the respondents even seemed to reject the facility simply
because of the financial compensation attached to it (Frey and Jegen, 2001).
Thus, considering how to connect intrinsic motives with potential extrinsic incentives is
crucial for practitioners.
Create perspectives: The practitioner should distinguish between primary motives of a
choice and secondary motives as this is a vital distinction. To illustrate why, think about
buying bottled water. Conceived in isolation, most people do not care much about which
bottle or brand of water to buy. That is, all the options will satisfy the primary motive of
quenching thirst. When this is the case, secondary motives may become of interest. A
secondary motive is an additional motive induced into considering a choice that provides
additional reasons for choosing one option over another. In the example of buying water,
you may, for example, find that one brand is donating some of the profits for charity. As a
result, when facing two identical bottles of water, which equally quench your thirst
(primary motive), the donation to charity (secondary motive) may act as a tiebreaker.
Making such secondary motives “salient” creates, what may be referred to as, a
perspective by highlighting an attribute that may provide a secondary motive for choosing
an option and is an effective way to influence choices in cases where people hold weak
preferences over options. An illustration of this comes from Norway where a study found
that making lifetime costs of domestic appliances salient to consumers encouraged them
to buy domestic appliances that were 4.9% more energy efficient (Kallbekken, Sælen and
Hermansen, 2013).
Trigger emotions: The concept of emotion refers to a type of cognitive experience
associated with intense mental activity and often resulting in an internal stimulus falling
somewhere in between pleasure and displeasure. A range of stimuli including sensory
stimuli, memory and mental simulation (i.e. imagination) may trigger emotions.
At least since Plato, the tradition in public policy has been to contrast emotions with
reason and argue that the latter should be held in higher regard as well as be protected
from the former in order to allow for making rational decisions. Thus, while emotions
may be treated as ends in themselves, the means should be evaluated independently from
the emotions that rational considerations might trigger. Thus, in a bit of caricature of the
rational perspective, emotions are to be treated as mere mental noise that one should aim
to transcend so that reason may prevail with a cool perspective on things. Looking at
communications from public bodies to citizens often reveals that this tradition is proudly
maintained.
However, contrary to Plato, evolutionary psychology holds that basic emotions and social
emotions alike have evolved to motivate behaviours that were adaptive in our ancestral
environment. Thus, a more contemporary behavioural perspective is that without emotion
there is no choice but apathy. Emotions are not noise when making choices and making
decisions.
In particular, the act of experiencing emotion (affect) is a fundamental factor when
navigating choices. To choose, we internally simulate the consequences of making one
choice over another and thus we automatically become emotionally stimulated. In some
areas, emotions are stimulated in order to seriously challenge or even crowd out our more
deliberative reasoning. However, there is no reason why it may not be used to make
sensible, but bland, preferable choice options a bit more attractive. Yet, this strategy is
still highly neglected in public communication.
Bertrand et al. (2010) conducted a field-experiment in financial decision-making, which
included experiments on an advertisement. In particular, the study found that a picture of
an attractive, smiling female increased demand for the financial product by the same
amount as a 25% decrease in the loan’s interest rate (see Bertrand et al., 2010; The
Behavioural Insights Team, 2010). Needless to say, the findings of science are not always
politically correct and practitioners should, of course, take this into account in choosing
how to apply behavioural insights.
Frame prospects
The framing and arrangement of prospects are perhaps the most famous but also one of
the more technical areas of BI as applied to public policy. In facing a series of choice
options, a person also faces a series of possible futures, i.e. prospects. While making it
attractive provides reasons for choosing, the framing of prospects influences people to
choose one or another option in subtle ways independent of what is chosen and why. That
is, one option may be chosen over another simply due to the way that choices are
presented – either as a matter of arrangement or as a matter of formulation.
Arranging choices: Albeit the influence of the mere arrangement of choices was not a
topic of Tversky and Kahneman, it is considered here as part of the strategy of framing
prospects. While a standard topic of marketing research, the principle of arranging
choices offers some simple behavioural insights to BI practitioners in public policy that
should always be considered, as any choice will always be arranged in one way or
another.
To illustrate the potential effect of arranging choices, consider the simple arrangement in
Figure 2.18 (Panel A) of two options of coffee with aligned attributes arranged
horizontally as below:
Figure 2.18. Arranging choices: which do you prefer?
A. Which do you prefer? B. Which do you prefer now?
EUR 2.50 EUR 3.50 EUR 2.50 EUR 3.50 EUR 4.50
Source: Produced by the OECD with images obtained free of copyright from Pixabay user TKaucic (2017),
https://pixabay.com/vectors/coffee-cup-cup-of-coffee-drink-2819815/.
Now, according to standard rational models, one should prefer either Option 1 – the small
coffee (EUR 2.50), or Option 2: the big coffee (EUR 3.50), or be indifferent. Now,
consider next the arrangement (Panel B) of two options of coffee with aligned attributes
arranged horizontally – which one do you prefer now?
In presenting people with choices like these in experiments and marketing research,
researchers find that some people who prefer Option 1 in the first setting, prefer Option 2
in the second setting. Such cases are problematic from a rational perspective since they
imply that some people may reverse their preferences from preferring Option 1 over 2 in
one setting to preferring 2 over 1 in an almost identical setting that only differs by
offering an even bigger Option 3. While this makes no sense from the perspective of
standard rationality, the behavioural sciences explain it as an instance of the compromise
effect: consumers are more likely to choose the middle option of a selection set with
aligned attributions, rather than the extreme options. That is, the mere arrangement of
options influences choice in irrational ways.
However, the compromise effect is not the only arrangement effect that researchers and
practitioners may consider. For instance, when attributes are not aligned, as is the case
with, for example, holiday packages or laptop computers, researcher have found that
people tend to choose extreme options as the number of options increases. This is the
opposite of what happens with the compromise effect illustrated above. Examples like
these reveal that the arrangement of options is a highly practical field where intuitions are
more or less useless at understanding why testing interventions in each context is
required.
There are certain contexts of public policy that are worth considering through the lens of
BI as applied to the arrangement of choice options. For instance, researchers have found
that the arrangement of choice options significantly affect food choices. Thus, for
instance, Hansen et al. (2016) found the mere re-arrangement of something as trivial as a
conference buffet with coffee, fruit and cake may decrease calorie consumption by 25% –
much more than is likely to be achieved through taxation of sugar and fat. In a similar
fashion, Miller and Krosnick (1998) found that the arrangement of choice options when
casting a vote significantly influences choice – both with regards to candidates within
parties and for parties themselves. This “ballot order effect” has shown that candidates
listed first on a ballot receive, on average, 2.5% more of the vote than those listed after.
This has led states like Ohio (USA) to rotate the name order of the candidates on its
ballots.
Framing prospects: Having considered how the mere arrangement of choice options
might affect choices, practitioners might also consider how to frame prospects so as to
encourage preferable choices given that the right conditions obtain.
At its most simple, the framing of prospects refers to how the mere formulation of choice
options may influence choices independent of their semantic content. For example, you
are presented a choice between two cancer treatments: The first gives an 80% chance of
survival, the second a 20% chance of death. Semantically they are the same but you are
likely to choose the first treatment only because survival sounds better than death.
While frames such as this one rely on the mere (positive or negative), yet inconsequential,
difference in the formulation choice options, Kahneman and Tversky identified a series of
systematic insights into how people are influenced by the formulation of prospects and
summarised this in their prospect theory (1979).
The value function is perhaps the most famous part of this theory (see Figure 2.19). It
provides a model of choice summarising findings of how people decide between
alternatives that involve risk and uncertainty. First and foremost, the model asserts that
people think in terms of expected utility relative to a reference point rather than absolute
terms. Second, the model captures the insight that people are more influenced by the
prospect of loss than the prospect of gains popularly expressed, as “losses loom larger
than gains” (loss aversion). Finally, the model captures the insight obtained from
experiments that people, due to declining marginal utility for gains as well as losses, are
risk averse for prospects involving gains, while risk seeking when it comes to prospects
involving the risk of losses.
Figure 2.19. The value function of prospect theory
Sources: Van der Plight, J. (2001), “Decision making, psychology of”, International Encyclopedia of the
Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp. 3309-3315, https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01750-2, based on
Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky (1979), “Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk”, Econometrica,
Vol. 47(2), p. 263, http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1914185.
While prospect theory may seem very abstract to policymakers, practitioners may use the
theory when deciding how to formulate simple prospects such as those faced by citizens
when making everyday decisions in their interaction with public bodies.
In 2016, the Danish Taxation Authority, working with iNudgeyou, increased the
percentage of companies filing taxes on time from 65% to 74% (compared to 2015) by
adding a reminder line to the original email formulated in terms of loss aversion saying
“Remember to report tax on time to avoid a tax surcharge of up to DKK 5 000. This
replaced the header reading “Remember to report tax before July 1st” (OECD, 2017). In
2017, Medway Council (United Kingdom) worked with UKBIT on increasing the rate at
which council taxpayers signed up for direct debit. Testing two new messages –
one which drew on loss aversion and one which drew on social norms – against a
business-as-usual control of no message, they found that both new messages significantly
increased sign-ups and that the loss aversion tactic worked slightly better, especially for
houses in high tax bands (Sanders, Jackman and Sweeney, 2017).
Other similar experiments exist, where choices are formulated in terms of reference
points, loss aversion and the risk evaluation predicted by prospect theory. Common to
these are that public policies revolving around incentives, risk and uncertainty may be
made more effective by merely considering how the choices are framed.
Make it social
Humans are, first and foremost, social beings. Yet, this is often ignored in public policy,
where they are, first and foremost, treated as isolated citizens, consumers and individuals.
Connecting with the social identities and norms informally co-ordinating and regulating
human groups and societies is an invaluable strategy in the pursuit of creating a change in
behaviour. In this regard, practitioners can make policy social by considering the
following insights.
Connect with social identities: Social identity is a complex phenomenon. The concept is
usually taken to refer to how we identify ourselves in relation to others according to what
we have in common. It is at the core of what provides us with a sense of self-esteem as
well as shapes our way of socialising and what behaviour we engage in. Strong and
intimate forces are at play when connecting with the social identity of people. However,
by considering the social identity of people as well as the social meanings that choices are
embedded within, practitioners may find ways of connecting the behaviour change sought
by public policies to the deeper fabric of the societies they serve.
A fundamental mechanism involved in social identity is each individual’s comparison
with its peers. This mechanism is what drives people’s sense of status, recognition and
identification with a group. Thus, by making certain choices people may gain status,
recognition and identity within groups of peers in spite that these choices may result in
little external reward. This was, for instance, famously shown in the campaign “Don’t
mess with Texas”. In this, the Texas Department of Transportation (USA) sought to
reduce littering on Texas roadways. They launched the “Don’t mess with Texas”
campaign targeted at 18-35 year-old males who were known to be most likely to litter and
created a slogan aimed at connecting with the social identity of the target group. The
campaign has been credited with reducing litter on Texas highways by 72% between
1986 and 1990 (Texas Department of Transportation, n.d.; Texas Times, 2016).
Another example comes from Opower, a leading US provider of customer engagement

and energy efficiency cloud services to utilities. Opower provides households with
“Home Energy Reports” that consists of two parts: one containing suggestions on how to
reduce energy adapted to the household and the other using social comparison that
compares the household to the 100 nearest houses of similar size. In an analysis
of 78 492 households separated into treatment (39 217 households) and control
(39 275 households), those receiving the social comparison reduced electricity
consumption by 2.0%, on average. Opower estimates that this would result in a reduction
of over 450 000 tonnes of CO2-emission equivalent to USD 75 million in energy savings
across the 15 million homes in the 6 countries they service (Allcott, 2011). Needless to
say, researchers and practitioners should be careful when trying to connect a given
behaviour change to people’s social identity. Misfires using this principle may seriously
backfire on the trust put in public officials and institutions as well as cause damage to the
social fabric. However, as social identities are fundamental to the functioning of any
human society, it is not a matter of whether but more about how public policies seek to
connect with those identities and for what purposes.
Create a sense of community. The final insight to be considered as part of the dimension
of choice is that of observing the role that a sense of community may play when people
make choices.
Most people’s choices ultimately have deeply ingrained social dimension to them. This
includes instrumental choices that co-ordinate people when interacting, such as when
adhering to conventions like speaking a particular language, driving on the same side of
the road or exchanging goods using a particular medium of economic exchange. It also
includes preferring instrumental activities more when performing these in groups or other
social contexts, such as when opting for packed theatre or restaurant rather than an empty
one, going to a gym or park that other people go to as well or preferring to see a soccer
match live on TV because of knowledge that everyone else are watching it at the same
time. Finally, it includes options that are preferred due to their social dimension being
part of the purpose, such as when going to a particular bar, playing golf with company or
singing in choir rather than alone.
Observing the role that a sense of community may play in how people make choices and
creating a sense of community around certain activities may hold the key for influencing
and creating certain types of behaviour that might otherwise be difficult to get people to
choose to pursue. This is evidenced by big marathon events, communal eating events and
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) facilitating the co-ordination of collective litter
collection, searches for missing individuals and charity fundraising.
Determination – Make it easy, provide plans and feedback, and create

commitments
Behavioural problems related to issues of determination share the characteristic of people
not acting on their intentions – the so-called intention-action gap. Making a choice is
sometimes easy, yet certain types of choices require repeated mobilisation of motivation
in the face of challenges posed by competing goals and temptations. When a behavioural
analysis reveals that a behavioural problem is fully or partially caused by issues related to
determination, ABCD offers the following strategies for practitioners to integrate into
policy design and implementation to help people stick to their plans.
Make it easy
Most people know that it is easy to form an intention of doing something. It is much
harder to get it done. However, we do not always anticipate this and tend to
systematically overestimate our own ability to take small steps to accomplish our goals.
Thus, choosing to do something is not the same as succeeding. The world is complex and
when any one person has to juggle multiple goals at once, even relatively small obstacles
may become a reason for postponing taking action. As a result, people tend to
procrastinate leading to inertia and maintaining the status quo.
In such cases, we usually put our faith in increasing motivation – our own, our
employees’, or citizens’ at large. However, one thing that the behavioural literature has
made clear is how it is often far more effective and cheaper to reduce or, if possible, even
remove those small obstacles referred to as “friction costs”. “Make it easy” is thus a
mantra, not only of Richard Thaler but also of any researcher or practitioner working with
BI.
On a theoretical level the behavioural insight captured by the mantra “make it easy” may
be illustrated as below (see Figure 2.20) by pitching motivation against the difficulty of
performing and action (the blue dot) relative to an action-threshold (curve A). When the
action is outside of the threshold inertia, procrastination results. The effect of the standard
approach of increasing motivation is captured by curve B. The effect of making an action
easier to perform is captured by curve C.
Figure 2.20. Making it easy
High
motivation
Low C
motivation
Hard to do Easy to do
From this, it is also obvious that while making something easy may be a way to get
people to get things done, there is also a shadow function of “making it easy”. As anyone
who has been on a diet knows, “making something just a bit more difficult” may have a
significant effect on inhibiting that action. Taken together, these two sides of the same
behavioural insight make for the strategy of working with friction, which may be
categorised, depending on details, as an instance of the policy approach called “nudging”
or “curling” described above. The following insights serve as illustrations.
Default effect by cognitive avoidance: There are many ways to “make it easy”.
Common to all of these is that they look easier and more straightforward in hindsight than
they do when in the process of doing them.
Changing the default is the most basic way of working with friction. For example, if
people are automatically subscribed to a programme, one removes all obstacles to signing
up. Simultaneously, of course, one also makes it more difficult for people to get around to
unsubscribe. Some of the most famous examples from BI are about changing the default
in the domain of determination. This use of defaults is called the default effect by
cognitive avoidance (DECA) and is different from the other behavioural insights
concerning the default effects discussed earlier.
Perhaps the most famous use of DECA is that in pension schemes. Automatically
enrolling employees in such schemes have been found to be incredibly effective
compared to when employees actively have to opt in (The Behavioural Insights Team,
2014). However, DECA applies to any policy problem requiring citizens to make a
continued effort in information search or goal maintenance. Thus, in Germany,
two natural experiments examined how default settings may affect consumer choice in
regards to energy consumption – an area in which consumer behaviour is notoriously
immobile because of suppliers’ use of subscriptions, the lack of urgency in revising
subscriptions and the high effort it takes to get an overview of the market and change
supplier. First, in Schönau, Schwartzwald, approximately 2 500 citizens established the
green electricity company Elektrizitätswerke Schönau in the wake of Chernobyl. Being
part of this company was the default for all citizens. Recent reports note that opt-outs are
marginally above 0% per year. Second, in Southern Germany, Energiedienst GMbH in
1999 substituted the former one-option model with a default system in which Option 1
was a green option that cost 23% more than the original model; Option 2 was the default
intermediate green option that was 8% cheaper than the original model; and Option 3 was
the least green option that was an additional 8% cheaper than Option 2. As a result, 94%
of consumers choose Option 2, that is the intermediate green default option, while only
4.3% choose the cheapest option, Option 3, and the remaining 2% either choose Option 1
or to change energy supplier (Pichert and Katsikopoulos, 2008).
Work with friction: Another principle for making something easier is by reducing or
increasing the hassle-factor or “friction” so as to make it easier to take up a preferable
service or performing an action.
Reducing the number of actions, clicks or questions that one needs to perform or answer
to succeed with something has been shown again and again to be a simple way to “make
it easy” to help people achieve their goals. Thus, going back to the flowcharts of the stage
of BEHAVIOUR to look for ways of simplifying the process that it takes to succeed in the
preferable behaviour is a recommended first step. In fact, UKBIT has run several
experiments showing the efficacy of this strategy. In one such experiment run with the
UK Revenue and Customs authority, tax collection rates improved from 19% to 23% by
directing letter recipients straight to a specific form they were required to complete rather
than to the web page that included the form. In another experiment, streamlining and
automating parts of the process for under-represented low-income groups applying for
financial assistance led to an eight percentage point increase in the university attendance
of these groups (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2014).
Conversely, when Denmark introduced an online “direct divorce” solution in 2013, it
made getting a divorce within minutes easy and the number of divorces increased
significantly. However, the number of people regretting their divorce shot up as well, as
the number of cases where people asked for an annulment of their divorce increased to
more than one out of ten. Laws were subsequently passed to make divorce a bit more
difficult again.
Thus, “make it easy” is not best understood in absolute terms but rather as a strategy of
making the preferable course of action relatively easier when compared with
non-preferable choices. When people have trouble self-regulating their response, as might
be the case for some files of divorce, determination may be supported by making some
choices a bit more difficult. In another example of this, deaths from paracetamol
poisoning were observed to decrease by 43% after new legislation required larger
portions to be sold in blister packs. As a result, 765 fewer people died between 1998 and
2009 (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2014).
Provide plans and feedback

In other situations, it is not possible or insufficient to make actions easier by changing the
default or reducing/increasing friction. In particular, some behaviour changes require that
goal-directed behaviours are not just initiated or considered once or twice but are also
continuously maintained over time. Besides the recurring attentional problems posed by
such behaviours, the mental taxation involved in doing this plus the balancing of
competing goals may easily lead to failure. One may thus intend to stick to a diet, a health
plan or taking one’s medications but, at some point, the continuous inner battles that need
to be repeatedly won may make the temptation of skipping a day or two too much.
In such situations, we often put our faith in our strength of will with only ourselves to
blame in case of failure. However, the behavioural science literature suggests that
continuously sticking to one’s plan to reach long-term goals may be just as much a matter
of technique and external feedback as a matter of inner resources. Teaching people the
fundamentals of these techniques (“boost”), such as how to set up the right kinds of plans
as well as arranging for suitable feedback, is thus behavioural insights that offer
themselves for constructing potential strategies for successful behaviour change. The
following insights exemplify this strategy.
Implementation intentions: A well-known way to succeed with a complex long-term
goal is by breaking the complex goal down to simple actionable steps. In the goal-setting
literature, this is often referred to as “eating an elephant by taking one bite at a time”.
Still, even when doing this, plans often fall through. After all, even simple long-term
goals may require continuous effort.
To alleviate this problem findings in the behavioural sciences, suggest that initiating as
well as maintaining goal-directed behaviour can become much more likely by the making
of concrete and specific action-plans, stipulating not only the goal but a context-specific
plan for accomplishing that goal of the form: “When C arises, I will perform response A”.
This type of conditional planning is referred to within the BI literature as implementation
intention plans. This “if-then” structure has been shown to result in a higher tendency of
succeeding with accomplishing one’s goals by predetermining a specific and desired
goal-directed behaviour in response to a particular cue or future event (Gollwitzer and
Brandstätter, 1997; Gollwitzer, 1999). Further, ensuing research in implementation has
found that when implementations are devised in advance to combat the potential
obstacles challenging the pursuit of a long-term goal, implementation intentions are even
more effective in supporting behaviour change. There are multiple reasons why
implementation intention plans are so effective. Most importantly such implementation
intention plans are assumed to cause mental representations of future situations such that
when they occur, the plan becomes automatically activated. This not only helps to remind
one of one’s goals and plans but also make following the plan automatic over time so that
it does not require conscious intent and deliberation. This can be used for a wide variety
of public policy relevant interventions from providing people with plans for voting,
sticking to one’s diet or exercise programme, to getting people to perform self-
examinations for health purposes.
Thus, in an experiment by Orbell, Hodgkins and Sheeran (1997), participants were first
asked to indicate how strongly they intended to perform breast self-examination (BSE)
during the next month. To create relevant implementation intentions, participants were
then asked to write down where they would perform BSE in the next month and at what
time of the day. Of the participants who had reported strong intentions to perform BSE
during the next month, 100% did so when they had been induced to form additional
implementation intentions. If no additional implementation intentions were formed,
however, the strong goal intention alone only produced 53% of goal completion. Similar
results based directly on administrative data, rather than self-report, have been found in
relation to flu shots (Milkman et al., 2011) and colonoscopies (Milkman et al., 2012).
Providing feedback: The word feedback, which originated in 1920 in the field of
electronics, has expanded its meaning widely to refer to almost any mechanism by which
information about the effect of an activity or process is returned and thereby, in turn, can
affect that activity or process in the future. A feedback intervention is defined as an action
taken by an external agent to provide information regarding some aspect(s) of one’s task
performance (Kluger and DeNisi, 1996). Historically, the two most influential
conclusions in research on feedback interventions are that they improve learning as well
as motivation, with the caveat that feedback may also decrease motivation if one is doing
poorly and has hardly any effects when an individual is already performing at a high
level.
There are different types of feedback, including natural feedback processes
(e.g. homeostasis); task-generated feedback (e.g. gardener seeing that they have flooded
their plants); feedback of progression (e.g. how long you have run on the treadmill);
feedback on results (e.g. how fast you ran five kilometers); relative feedback (e.g. your
place in a race); social comparison feedback (e.g. how much you earn compared to your
colleagues); personal feedback (e.g. your wife telling you that you could do better in all
aspects of life). If seeking to help people sticking to a long-term goal, providing them
with the suitable kind of feedback in the right situation may help them stay on track.
As an example of using feedback to change behaviour, in 2017 the Australian Department
of Health identified 6 649 general practitioners (GPs) whose antibiotic prescribing rates
were in the top 30% for their geographic region. Four different letters were prepared to
test different behavioural insights, while a control group of 1 338 did not receive a letter.
The trial found the biggest impact was on the 1 333 GPs whose letter from the chief
medical officer contained a comparison with their peers as shown in a graphic depicting
their scripts as a stack of red and white capsules. “I know that antimicrobial resistance is a
complex issue that requires concerted efforts across general practice, hospitals,
laboratories and animal health professionals”, the chief medical officer wrote. “However,
there is clear evidence that reducing unnecessary prescribing can lower the incidence of
antimicrobial resistance. The benefits of tackling this problem are relevant to every one of
our patients”. The GPs who received that letter reduced their prescribing rate by 12.3%
over the next 6 months (Australian Government Department of Health, 2018).
Create commitments (social expectations)

Sometimes, it takes more than working with friction or providing plans and feedback to
help individuals achieve their long-term goals. The challenges and obstacles may just be
too numerous or too hard to overcome. But even in such circumstances, the behavioural
science literature has a trick up its sleeve. One reason that people procrastinate is that in a
long-term perspective, everything seems easier if postponed to the future. That is why
people take up 12 months interest-free loans – for surely, in a year, we will be better at
handling our finances than now. It is also why you systematically tend to set your alarm
clock to 6 am, only to press the snooze button. Behavioural scientists refer to this pattern
in behaviour as “present bias”. People like to enjoy themselves in the present, while “the
future” invites for all the difficult tasks we know we ought to do.
On a theoretical level, the present bias refers to the tendency of people to give stronger
weight to payoffs that are closer to the present time when considering trade-offs between
two future moments (O’Donoghue and Rabin, 1999). Practitioners may integrate this
tendency into policy interventions by planning so that the tasks necessary for
accomplishing a long-term goal are in the future when making a decision to pursue them
and then put in place a commitment device that is hard to ignore when facing temptations.
This can be done by considering the following two classes of insights.
Private commitment devices: Private commitments to a particular goal or action, for
instance, making a commitment that is not public, is closely connected with the
behavioural insight of connecting with social identities (see above). In making a private
commitment, one introduces self-directed expectations and thereby constrains how one is
allowed to think about oneself depending on failure or success in accomplishing the goal
set. However, a private commitment is not just about making a pledge to oneself. It is
about taking up a commitment device to realign reasons and incentives such that sticking
to one’s plan becomes more attractive when challenged by temptations or when mentally
taxed.
A particularly well-known form of a private commitment device is Ulysses contracts,
where people pre-commit an amount of money that is returned to them only if they meet a
prior agreed behavioural change goal. The idea is that Ulysses contracts help tackle
present bias and utilise loss aversion (Oliver, 2017). To examine the effect of such
contracts, Volpp et al. (2008) designed a study with three groups: subjects in Group 1
were assigned a weight-monitoring programme; subjects in Group 2 were also assigned
the weight loss programme plus a Ulysses contract; and subjects in Group 3 were
assigned the weight loss programme plus a lottery incentive. After 16 weeks, the average
weight losses were 3.9 lbs, 14 lbs and 13.1 lbs respectively. The proportions of those in
each group achieving the weight loss target of 16lbs were 10.5%, 47.4% and 52.6%
respectively. Unfortunately, 7 months after the initiation of the study the average losses
across the 3 groups had narrowed to 4.4 lbs, 6.2 lbs and 9.2 lbs respectively – a
statistically insignificant difference due to small sample size. In general, there is mixed
evidence of the efficacy of Ulysses contracts in public health but it is part of a class of BI
strategies that should be considered by practitioners, as ongoing digitisation will vastly
increase the space for the application of this strategy.
Public commitments: Public commitments are similarly connected with social identities
and are a stronger type of commitment than private commitments. Yet, in making a
public commitment, one creates both self-directed expectations as well as expectations in
others about one’s behaviour and thereby leverages social norms (see above). Taken
together, these two aspects of public commitments intertwine so as to substitute for the
usually material incentives introduced by private commitments – and as the literature has
it, are far more effective at achieving its purpose.
In its most rudimentary form, a public commitment is nothing more than a pledge made
publicly. The power of such commitments was documented in a 1972 field experiment by
Thomas Moriarty (1975) when staging 56 thefts at Jones Beach, New York. In all of
them, a portable radio was stolen from an unattended blanket. With the aid of
two experimental confederates, the theft was staged in full view of each subject. In each
case, the “confederate victim” placed his/her blanket (the victims were interchanged
according to gender) within five feet of the subject, turned on his/her portable radio to a
local rock station (at a fairly high volume). After reclining for one to two minutes, the
victim left his/her blanket and spoke briefly to the subject, either asking for the subject to
watch his/her things (Group 1) or for a lighter to lit his/her cigarette (Group 2). The
confederate victim then strolled away out of sight. Two to three minutes after, a
“confederate thief” came along and stole the radio. The results were: in Group 2, only
20% of the subjects responded to the obvious theft compared to 95% in Group 1 (ignoring
the 16 subjects that self-reportedly did not see the theft, all of which came from Group 2).
Similar results for the efficacy of public commitments have been obtained in a wide range
of settings (Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, 2015). For instance, in a field experiment in
the UK, having patients repeat the date of their doctor’s appointment led to a 3.5%
reduction in “do not attends” (DNAs), while further having them write it down led to a
subsequent reduction in DNAs of 18% compared to the previous 6 months average
(Martin, Bassi and Dunbar-Rees, 2012).
However, this effect was increased even further – to 31.7% decrease in DNAs – when a
poster was added that 9 out of 10 patients showed up to their doctors’ appointment. As
this situation is not linked to people being uncertain about the most suitable or correct
behaviour when lacking information, this effect is not one of social proof (see above).
Rather, it is about leveraging social norms, one of the most powerful ways to influence
people’s behaviour but also one that calls for cautiousness.
Leveraging social norms

The final insight to be considered as part of the aspect of determination is that of
harnessing the power of social norms. At the most general level, social norms are the
mutual expectations that govern the behaviour of members of groups and societies.
Behaviours adhering to social norms can be puzzling: experiments show people forego
immediate self-serving behaviour to respect fairness or that norms may persist even when
everyone in a group would prefer if the norm did not exist. Social norms provide strong
expectations and constraints on what is acceptable behaviour as perceived by the group
and thus group members may go to great lengths to abide by the existing norms, which
may be incredibly difficult to change. However, in some situations, researchers and
practitioners may turn to leveraging the power of social norms, especially when
promoting pro-social behaviours.
Famously, the UKBIT working with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) changed a letter
sent to people who were told in letters from HMRC that most people pay their tax on time
and those who had not, belonged to the minority group that had failed to do so. This
intervention significantly increased payment rates with a 5-percentage point increase in
payments and led to GBP 1.2 million more being paid in the first month than the control
group (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2014). What makes this intervention different
from the Opower experiment mentioned above is that whereas the latter experiment
works by using social comparison to get people to compare their own actual performance
relative to other people’s performance with their self-perception, the tax experiment
mentioned here explicitly uses fundamental in-group-out-group norms to pass a social
judgment and signal normative expectations on those who do not comply.
Another BI experiment leveraging the power of social norms was aimed at passengers in
minibuses in Kenya to reduce traffic deaths. In the experiment, researchers used stickers
in buses to remind passengers of their right to a safe ride on public transportation and
encouraging them to “heckle and chide” reckless drivers. The intervention was a
remarkable success. In the buses randomly assigned to the treatment group, insurance
claims involving injury or death fell by half, from 10% to 5% of claims. This was
reflected in a survey of drivers, suggesting that passenger heckling played a role in
improving safety (Habyarimana and Jack, 2011).
Needless to say, leveraging social norms should be done with care. For one, when
leveraging social norms practitioners intervene in and make use of structures at the
foundation of societal organisation and government. Second, for those influenced by
social norms, they may feel stigmatised and that their social fabric is being misused if the
purpose of leveraging social norms is not clearly acceptable.
Ethical guidelines for designing BI strategies for behaviour change

(STRATEGIES)
The stage of STRATEGIES suggests a series of categories of behavioural insights to inform
the design of potential public policies to match behavioural problems identified through
the preceding BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS section. However, since some behavioural
insights rely on mechanisms that are not fully accessible to consciousness or under
people’s conscious control, the BI paradigm has continuously been facing criticism and
suspicion of serving governmental manipulation with people’s choices. The ethics of
applying BI, therefore, quickly become a more complex matter. For one, it involves
counter-intuitive and theoretical scientific insights for which our moral intuitions are not
well adapted. For another, behavioural insights are not all alike and hence difficult to
evaluate as one.
Still, several distinctions and observations may be drawn providing some guidance for
what to consider when evaluating the ethics of behavioural insights for informing public
policies.
Some misunderstandings to avoid

While we are always being behaviourally influenced, this does not exempt BI from
ethical evaluation. It is sometimes claimed with reference to Thaler and Sunstein’s book
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008) that since we
cannot avoid behavioural influences, then ethics is not an issue that needs be considered.
This is neither true nor what Thaler and Sunstein assert. More importantly, while it might
be true that we are always being behaviourally influenced, when applying BI, researchers,
practitioners and policymakers intentionally try to intervene to change the behaviour of
citizens. With intentional intervention comes ethical responsibility that cannot be evaded
by pointing to the fact that citizens otherwise would have been influenced by different
factors.
Public acceptance of a behavioural intervention does not make it ethically

permissible. In recent years a long series of survey studies have surfaced inquiring into
the public acceptance of applying various kinds of behavioural insights to change
people’s behaviour. While such empirical studies are interesting since they reveal the
structure of the moral intuitions relative to BI, any kind of public acceptance of a
behavioural intervention does not make that intervention ethically permissible. For one,
such surveys do not easily reconcile with the theoretical underpinnings of BI. Second, one
cannot deduce what ought to be acceptable from what is currently acceptable.
While people may avoid a behavioural intervention in principle, this does not mean
that they can in practice. It is sometimes held that BI interventions neither force
individuals to act in a certain way nor sanction them economically. Hence, it is said,
applying BI cannot be morally objectionable. However, it should be noted that the
freedom of choice held in this case is often one that only pertains to ideally rational
individuals – and since one of the main propositions of BI is that real-world individuals
are not ideally rational, it is incoherent to hold this position.
Two central distinctions

Transparent and non-transparent interventions. Not all aspects of applying
behavioural insights are inaccessible to consciousness. While it is sometimes held that
behavioural insights influence individual behaviour in ways that are inaccessible to
consciousness, this is not the case for some types of influences. In particular, the use of
insights such as salience, reminders, prompts, questions trees, implementation intentions
and the like, are usually transparent to citizens. The application of such insights is
referred to as transparent, while influences for which citizens cannot identify who is
trying to influence them, by what means and for what purposes are referred to as non-
transparent.
Avoidable and unavoidable interventions. Not all influences from applying behavioural
insights are outside people’s control (i.e. automatic). It is sometimes held that behavioural
insights influence people’s behaviour in ways that render it outside of their conscious
control. However, while some insights mediate their effects in ways that people cannot
avoid, many applications make possible or even depend on conscious control. Influences
that people cannot control are referred to as unavoidable, while influences that make it
possible or depend on conscious control are referred to as avoidable.
These two distinctions can be combined to form four types of policy interventions (see
Figure 2.21). When assessing the transparency and “avoidability” of these interventions,
keep in mind the following considerations:
 Prioritise transparency. Is your intervention clearly communicated, including
being transparent about its purpose and nature?
 Offer a way out. Can citizens avoid the intervention? Does the intervention offer
easy pathways to objections and complaints?
 Ensure the policy intervention serves the public interest. Is it in line with
public sentiments? Does it prevent harm against others?
 Ensure citizens are not being held responsible for consequences that they did
not consciously select. In your context, are they able to fully understand the
implications of their choices? Are they considered legally accountable for these?
Figure 2.21. A framework for thinking about the responsible use of BI in public policy
Transparent avoidable Non-transparent avoidable

strategies strategies
i.e. save-more-tomorrow (when i.e. posters with faces to increase

chosen), calorie postings, fly-in-the- compliance rates, increasing
urinal, prompted choice for organ willingness to pay through anchoring,
donation framing of wording of choice frames
Transparent unavoidable Non-transparent unavoidable

strategies strategies
i.e. changing printer defaults, explicit i.e. save-more-tomorrow (when auto-

visual illusions to control traffic, enrolled), opt-out organ donation,
playing relaxing music in public re-organising cafeterias, implicit
places visual illusions to control traffic
Source: Adapted from Hansen, P.G. and A.M. Jespersen (2013), “Nudge and the manipulation of choice: A
framework for the responsible use of the nudge approach to behaviour change in public policy”, European
Journal of Risk Regulation, Vol. 4(1), pp. 3-28.
Table 2.7. Ethical guidelines for Stage 3: STRATEGY
1. While we are always being behaviourally influenced, this does not exempt BI from ethical evaluation. While it might
be true that we are always being behaviourally influenced, when applying BI, researchers, practitioners and policymakers
intentionally try to intervene to change the behaviour of citizens. With intentional intervention comes ethical responsibility that
cannot be evaded by pointing to the fact that citizens otherwise would have been influenced by different factors.
2. Devising strategies for behaviour change is not morally objectionable in and of itself. BI is sometimes criticised for
seeking to intervene in the life of citizens in order to influence their behaviour. However, this is not an objection against
applying BI in public policy but rather against public policy in general. After all, the raison d’être of public policy is intervening
in individuals’ lives to regulate and influence citizens’ behaviour.
3. Public acceptance of a behavioural policy intervention does not make it ethically permissible. In recent years, a
long series of survey studies have surfaced inquiring into the public acceptance of applying various kinds of behavioural
insights to change human behaviour. While such empirical studies are interesting since they reveal the structure of the moral
intuitions relative to BI, any kind of public acceptance of a behavioural intervention does not make that intervention ethically
permissible. For one, such surveys do not easily reconcile with the theoretical underpinnings of BI. Second, one cannot
deduce what ought to be acceptable from what is currently acceptable.
4. While people may avoid a behavioural policy intervention in principle, this does not mean that they can in
practice. It is sometimes held that BI interventions neither force individuals to act in a certain way nor sanction them
economically. Hence, it is said, applying BI cannot be morally objectionable. However, it should be noted that the freedom of
choice held in this case is often one that only pertains to ideally rational individuals – and since one of the main propositions
of BI is that real-world individuals are not ideally rational, it is incoherent to hold this position.
5. Not all aspects of applying behavioural insights are inaccessible to consciousness. While it is sometimes held that
behavioural insights influence individual behaviour in ways that are inaccessible to consciousness, this is not the case for
some types of influences. In particular, the use of insights such as salience, reminders, prompts, questions trees,
implementation intentions and the like, are usually transparent to citizens. The application of such insights is referred to as
transparent, while influences for which citizens cannot identify who is trying to influence them, by what means and for what
purposes are referred to as non-transparent.
6. Not all aspects of applying behavioural insights are outside people’s control, i.e. automatic. It is sometimes held
that behavioural insights influence people’s behaviour in ways that render it outside of their conscious control. However,
while some insights mediate their effects in ways that people cannot avoid, many applications make possible or even
depends on conscious control. Influences that people cannot control are referred to as unavoidable, while influences that
make it possible or depend on conscious control are referred to as avoidable.
7. Transparent avoidable policy interventions are usually regarded as ethically permissible when serving peoples
interests. As potential policies based on such influences are transparent and under the conscious control of citizens, citizens
are in a situation where they can decide to reject and thus avoid the policy intervention in question. Thus, such policies will
usually be permissible as long as they are intended to serve the interest of citizens and thus qualifies for public policy
intervention.
8. Transparent unavoidable policy interventions are usually regarded as ethically permissible when serving people
interests and routes to objections are made available. Being transparent, citizens will be aware of such interventions but
since they are not readily avoidable due to their automatic mediators, policymakers should always take care to make
available routes for objecting and complaining about the potential intervention as part of its design, this includes easy routes
to writing letters of complaints and making contact with public officials.
9. Non-transparent unavoidable policy interventions are usually not regarded as ethically permissible unless they
serve people interests, are clearly communicated, routes to objections are made available and citizens are not held
accountable. Some behavioural interventions are not readily transparent and may not be unavoidable. Policies designed on
such interventions may be ethically permissible if: i) their existence, purpose and their nature as a means is clearly
communicated, thereby making them transparent in principle; ii) easy routes to objections and complaints are made
available; iii) the intervention serves peoples interests; and iv) citizens are not held accountable for the consequences.
10. Non-transparent avoidable policy interventions are usually not regarded as ethically permissible even if serving
peoples interests. When a policy intervention is non-transparent and avoidable, this means that it will usually be a matter of
intentional manipulation by policy design, while at the same time people will usually be held accountable for their actions. In
such cases, citizens are treated as a means, rather than an end. Even if such interventions are intended to serve the
interests of citizens, they are usually not permissible unless they serve to prevent harm to others.
Annex: Approaches in behavioural public policy

As we move from flexible and exploratory stages of BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS to the
more pre-determined stages of STRATEGIES and INTERVENTION of a BI project, it is
useful to take a step back and take an overview of the ways in which BI can be applied.
The most famous is through nudging, popularised by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), and is
often seen as the primary application of BI. However, it is just one of several approaches
which may be characterised relative to traditional public policy as follows and for a
similar but alternative characterisation (see Oliver, 2017).
Traditional public policy analyses target behaviour as the outcome of rational
deliberation and decision-making by agents with unbounded attention and willpower. It
conceptualises behavioural problems as the result of lack of information, absence of
attitudes or lack of sufficient incentives and motivation. As a result, it pursues behaviour
change by providing rational reasons for action, such as information (informational
campaigns), presenting and arguing the case (persuasive campaigns), providing incentives
(reliefs, rebates, taxation, fees and fines) and legal regulation (formalised prescriptions
and prohibitions sanctioned by law).
Pushing understands target behaviours as either outcomes of rational agency or results of
laziness. Behavioural problems are thus seen as the result of cognitive misers and biases
due to agents allocating insufficient priority to attention, information search, deliberation
and following through on their intentions. While push politics thus does recognise a
behavioural component in the analysis of behaviour, it pursues behaviour change by
emphasising and strengthening aspects of choice architectures that provide rational
reasons for action beyond what ought to be required from a purely traditional approach.
The aim is to trump cognitive bias by having people make meta-decisions about
prioritising targeted behaviours so that the problems are resolved through reflective
thinking. Doubling cigarette prices, tripling prison sentences, quadrupling traffic fines,
and the like, are examples of push politics.
Boosting analyses target behaviour as either an outcome of reflective thinking or a result
of lack of competencies. Behavioural problems are analysed as the result of cognitive bias
influencing people when they lack the information, skills and competencies to navigate a
complex world (Hertwig, 2017). This approach aims to make it easier for people to
exercise their own agency in making choices by “boosting” individuals’ own decision-
making competencies. It ranges from strategies that require little time and effort on the
individual’s part to strategies that require substantial amounts of training, effort and
motivation. Providing people with statistical skills or presenting information to them in
ways that make them less likely to be influenced by cognitive biases are instances of
boost politics.
Curling analyses target behaviours in light of people’s limited motivation and lack of
self-control. Behavioural problems are seen as the result of “friction” where people have
difficulties following through on their intentions in demanding processes and choice
architectures (e.g. as administrative frameworks) or hostile choice environments
(e.g. supermarkets). Curling is a paradigm of protection that attempts to weaken, remove
and/or counter the psychological mechanisms identified by BI by trying to remove
friction in choice architectures or counter illicit “nudges” by, for example, banning
certain choice architectural features, such as the EU’s ban of pre-ticked boxes on
shopping websites to aid consumers (European Commission, 2014) or imposing
mandatory cool down periods on payday loans.
Nudging analyses target behaviours as outcomes of limited capabilities for people to

exert rational agency. Behavioural problems are seen as the result of cognitive
limitations, biases and heuristics impeding ABCD from conforming to the rules of
rationality, thus preventing people from achieving subjectively preferred outcomes in
such problems. Nudging aims to influence behaviours by intentionally applying BI, not
only in the analysis of behaviours but also as strategic means to achieve behaviour
change. It does this by integrating particular “nudges” into aspects of the choice
architectures within which decision points are embedded.
Box 2.9. Two definitions of nudge
The concept of a nudge was originally coined in the relevant sense by Richard Thaler and
Cass Sunstein in the famous book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and
Happiness (2008). Various revisions have been provided in the academic literature in
order to clarify conceptually as well as ethically relevant aspects of the definition, such as
whether nudges are intentional interventions and how nudges involve the active us of
non-rational psychological mechanisms.
Nudge as originally defined by Thaler and Sunstein

“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters
people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly
changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be
easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a
nudge. Banning junk food does not” (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).
Mechanistic definition
“A nudge is a function of any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or
behaviour in a predictable way (1) that is made possible because of cognitive boundaries,
biases, routines and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for
people to perform rationally in their own declared self-interests and which (2) works by
making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such
attempts” (Hansen, 2016).
In addition, nudging may be regarded as the systematic development, test and
implementation of evidence-based nudges, where practitioners rely on psychological
theories, such as dual and triple process theories, and make use of experimental methods
for effect-and policy evaluation.
Sources: Thaler, R. and C. Sunstein (2008), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and
Happiness, Yale University Press; Hansen, P.G. (2016), “The definition of nudge and libertarian paternalism:
Does the hand fit the glove?”, European Journal of Risk Regulation, Vol. 7(1), pp. 155-174.
A savvy behavioural practitioner will keep all approaches for using BI in mind as they
move into the stage of STRATEGIES. This also includes knowing when a policy problem is
not behavioural at all and thus inviting for more traditional public policy tools to address
the problem.
Note
1
The exact function of prompts has sometimes confused BI researchers and practitioners. Text
message reminders may, for example, in some cases be interpreted as a prompt as you often cannot
proceed on your phone without taking notice of the message. In such cases, the message works
both as a prompt and reminder. Also, it has been discussed whether a prompt works as a nudge or
is more like being coerced to do something. The short answer is that it depends on the details of
the prompt. When you cannot bypass a prompt without making a decision, it forces you to make a
choice and works like a “push”. When a prompt leaves one open to dismissing it, e.g. by shutting
down a pop-up box, it forces you to pay attention to what is being asked for; or more precisely, it
forces you to make a decision about making a decision (push) but only nudges you to make the
latter decision. Yet, these conceptual matters are secondary to the question of whether prompts
work.
Stage 4: INTERVENTION – Testing BI strategies for informing public policies
Stage 4: INTERVENTION
At this point, a BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS has been conducted and, using ABCD, relevant
behavioural insight STRATEGIES that may inform public policies aimed at creating
behaviour change have been identified. The next stage, Stage 4: INTERVENTION, aims to
test whether these strategies may effectively inform the design and delivery of public
policies. In BI, such tests are devised through interventions based on scientific standards
of experimentation. Yet, the special purpose of testing strategies to inform actual
policymaking rather than scientific discovery can make things quite complex. This
chapter tries to strike the difficult balance of providing the basics of experimentation in
an accessible way, while at the same time inform about some of the more complex
possibilities, limitations and problems. It does so by:
1. Explaining some basic features and concepts of the experimental approach.
2. Exploring some fundamental issues that are often neglected in simplified accounts
of the experimental approach.
3. Providing the basic steps for carrying out simple BI experiments.
When
It is attractive to think that INTERVENTION is mainly a stage for academics or one that
might be skipped by copy-pasting BI strategies that have already been tested with success
in other places. However, as will be argued in this chapter, unless the BI team has
reasonable evidence that the same mechanisms and boundary conditions are in place for a
target behaviour as in past successful interventions and subsequent implementations,
there is good reason to test the intervention relative to the target behaviour.
Milestone
The aim of INTERVENTION is to test the effectiveness as well as potential side effects of
behavioural insights strategies suggested for informing public policies relative to a target
behaviour. If the test proves to be successful, the BI project may use the result as an
evidential basis for informing public policies in the next stage: CHANGE.
At the heart of the BI paradigm lies the ambition to evaluate the effectiveness of
suggested behavioural insights for informing public policies according to the
methodological standards of the behavioural sciences. This stands in marked contrast to
many other innovative policymaking methods, which may employ piloting and testing but
in a more design-led perspective that is not based on rigorous experimental methods.
Thus, Stage 4 of BASIC focuses specifically on the experimental approach that is
fundamental to BI, based on a systematic and iterative process of positing hypotheses
about human nature, and then designing and evaluating behavioural insights strategies
based on these hypotheses to arrive at the best possible strategies for changing the target
behaviour.
Basic features and concepts of the experimental approach

To “experiment” or, to “carry out an experiment”, is a word that has penetrated everyday
language in a sense where it means to “try out new things” or “do things differently than
usual” to see if some change might have an effect on something else. Yet, in the sciences,
testing through experimentation means something much more precise.
In the sciences, the point of an experiment is to demonstrate the causal relationship
between an intervention and its outcome. Said differently, the reason you conduct an
experiment is to find out whether making some intervention (i.e. the manipulation of an
independent variable) will cause an effect (i.e. a measurable difference in one or more
dependent variables). In addition, an experiment may also aim to determine through
which mechanism (mediator) a cause produces its effect, under what conditions
(boundary conditions), what may moderate it (moderators) and what kind of relationship
between cause and effect is obtained (relationship).
An experiment does this by “cloning the world in two”, then simulating what happens in
the cloned world (counterfactual) where the only difference is that the intervention
occurs, and finally comparing the resulting state of the cloned world with the original one
(status quo) to determine whether a difference is obtained. Insofar as the only difference
between the two worlds is the prior occurrence of the intervention in the counterfactual
world with a following change in the state of that world, the difference may be asserted to
result from the intervention. That is, the cause of the effect can be attributed to the
intervention.
So how may a practitioner conduct experiments that actually teach us something about
relationships between causes and effects in the real world and, specifically, about lessons
of the effects of integrating suggested behavioural insights in public policies? And when
can we trust findings to apply to people, contexts and times beyond those conditions
within which an experiment is conducted? These are quite difficult questions to answer,
but the most prominent suggestion in current BI is by conducting randomised controlled
trials (RCTs) in the field.
Randomised controlled trials

RCTs have been at the core of the evidence-based movement over the last two decades in
public policy. By many of its proponents, RCTs are considered the “gold standard”
because they represent the best scientific method available for assessing whether an
intervention is effective, as well as, if designed ideally, assessing the nature of the causal
relationship, i.e. the mechanisms, involved. This attitude is especially prevalent within the
BI community where many hold RCTs to be the best way of determining whether a
policy intervention is effective.
In its simplest form (Figure 2.22), an RCT randomly allocates participants to one of
two groups: a group that receives the intervention (treatment group, or counterfactual)
and a control group which does not (control group, or status quo). The treatment is then
applied and the differences between the groups are observed and measured in terms of
differences between the dependent variable for the two groups via a post-test. The
random allocation is critical in ensuring that the two groups are statistically equivalent in
known as well as unknown traits.
Figure 2.22. Basic RCT design: Post-test only
POPULATION
SAMPLE FRAME
SAMPLE
RANDOMISATION
GROUP 1 GROUP 2
Receives no Receives
intervention intervention
POST TEST POST TEST
Analysis
If the group of participants recruited for the experiment (sample) consists of an equal
amount of men and women (known traits), the random allocation of participants to the
two experimental groups will result in each of these two groups converging to the same
distribution of men and women as in the sample, as the number of allocated participants
grows larger. Likewise, for any unknown trait in the sample, such as sleeping sclerosis or
genetic disposition for type 2 diabetes, the random allocation to groups will ensure that
each of the two experimental groups converge to the same distribution with regards to
these unknown traits as in the sample as the number of allocated participants grows
larger. It is in this sense that the random allocation to groups serves to create
two equivalent groups in known as well as unknown traits.
Thus, provided that the participants are allocated randomly to each group, an RCT comes
as close as possible to creating a counterfactual world to the status quo – the only
difference between the groups involved in the experiment is the intervention received. If
no other variable could have influenced the outcome, any subsequent difference between
the groups can be attributed as a causal effect of the intervention.
An experimental design refers to the way an experiment is designed to document the
potential effect of an intervention. This goes beyond how participants are allocated to
experimental groups. In the following, the most basic experimental RCT designs are
described.
 Post-test only RCT: At minimum, an RCT requires the random allocation of
participants to groups, some intervention and the measurement of the potential
effect tested for. The post-test only randomised controlled trial fits this minimal
design. In this, participants are randomly allocated to an experimental
“intervention group” or an experimental “no intervention group” referred to as the
control group. After the treatment, a post-test is given to both groups to measure
and compare the effect of the intervention in terms of differences between the
dependent variable for the two groups.
 Post-test only two treatment comparison trial: A variation of this design is the
post-test only two-treatment comparison trial which, instead of having an
“intervention group” and a “no intervention group”, has two interventions groups.
It then compares the effect of the interventions in terms of the differences
between the dependent variable for the two groups by applying a post-test.
It should be emphasised that the post-test only two-treatment comparison trial is quite
problematic since there is no way of knowing whether the two treatments tested are better
or worse than the policy status quo. The reason that it is mentioned here is that it
transpires that practitioners may easily become attracted to the idea of testing a
behaviourally informed strategy intervention up against what may be referred to as a
“false control”. This may happen when seeking to test a treatment, e.g. a reminder or
letter, where no similar treatment (reminder or letter) has existed before but finding it of
too little interest to test against the status quo. This scenario has been observed to lead
some practitioners to have public servants write up a “control letter”. Yet, this strategy
should be avoided since any differences could well be from this “false control” being
quickly and poorly assembled; and practitioners should always retain a control group in
the experimental design representing the policy status quo.
However, if sample sizes are small, even the post-test only RCT experimental design just
mentioned may become problematic as a low number of participants may allow for
differences between groups to creep in, thereby undermining their equivalence. In such
cases introducing a pre-test into the experimental design above may offset some of the
uncertainty resulting from a small sample size. This provides us with the following
experimental design:
 The pre-test post-test RCT: In the pre-test post-test randomised controlled trial
(see Figure 2.23) participants are measured pre-test on the dependent variable and
then randomly allocated to a control group and an intervention group
(independent of the result). The latter group then receives the intervention while
the control group receives no such intervention. Finally, participants of all groups
are subjected to a post-test measurement. Results from the two groups are then
compared relative to each group’s pre-test post-test changes.
Figure 2.23. Basic RCT design: Pre-test-post-test
POPULATION
SAMPLE FRAME
SAMPLE
RANDOMISATION
GROUP 1 GROUP 2
PRE TEST PRE TEST
Receives Receives
no intervention intervention
POST TEST POST TEST
Analysis
These experimental designs are aimed at testing a single factor intervention at a time.
This is completely in line with how some researchers think about doing BI experiments in
the real world: only test one factor at a time so we may truly isolate the causal
relationship. Too many BI practitioners tend to repeat this mantra, taking it to mean that
one can only test one factor in any given experiment. Fortunately, this is not quite so.
Granted that one knows one’s way around experimental design, more than one factor may
be tested in one and the same experiment “almost for free”. One way of doing this is by
using factorial designs.
 Factorial designs: A factorial design tests two (or more) independent variables
and their potential interaction effect at the same time by combining the “levels”
(including the binary one of the “absence” and “presence” of an intervention) with
the levels of another factor. For instance, imagine you want to test
“Intervention A: Salient deadline” and “Intervention B: Social proof”. Now, you
may either do two RCTs or pursue a 2x2 factorial design like the one in
Figure 2.24.
Figure 2.24. 2x2 factorial design
ABSENT Treatment B PRESENT
ABSENT 1 3
Treatment A
PRESENT 2 4
A 2x2 factorial design like this implies that four groups for covering all possible
combinations of the two interventions are created and participants randomly allocated to
these. One reason for working with a factorial design like this is that it provides more
information than two separate RCTs because it allows you to study the effect of an
intervention relative to:
 the level (e.g. presence/absence) of a second principle (2 or 3 compared to 4)
 the combined effect relative to the control (1 compared to 4)
 any potential interaction effect of the 2 interventions tested (2 + 3 compared to 4).
Despite that factorial designs allow for learning a lot from one experiment, they may
quickly grow out of hand relative to the sample size available. For instance, if you have
three insights you want to test (absent/present), say formulations integrating loss aversion,
salient deadline and social proof respectively, you will need eight groups. In this case,
one may opt for a “fractional factorial design”. This design offers additional possibilities,
but as we shall see one should also use it with some care.
 Fractional factorial designs: If the number of combinations in a full factorial
becomes too high to be feasible, a fractional factorial design may be used. In such
a design only some of the possible combinations are tested.
A particular use of the fractional factorial design in BI may be illustrated using the
2x2 factorial design above. Assuming that budgets, available sample size, institutional
cautiousness or some other constraint only allows for three rather than four groups, the
fractional factorial design may omit to test a group, e.g. as here the group testing
Combination 3, such that only Combinations 1, 2, and 4 are tested. This allows for an
experimental design sometimes informally referred to as a “multi-layered experiment”
because the test builds up by adding layer after layer of interventions for the experiment
to test (see Figure 2.25).
Figure 2.25. Fractional factorial design
Treatment B
Treatment A Treatment A
Basic control letter Basic control letter Basic control letter
Group 1 Group 2 Group 4
While a fractional factorial design allows one to create layer-by-layer interventions, it

also presents a standard pitfall when applying BI to real-world public policy. That is, the
stakeholder ordering the experiment may see no reason to waste resources on Group 1,
where the control is established and rather focus on Groups 2 and 4. This can happen in
the public policy space, where legal obligations of the stakeholder institution could apply
or a moral imperative to provide the best public services could be argued.
Thus, imagine a team that considers applying a fractional factorial design like that above.
By hypothesis, the team expects that behavioural insight a will have a larger effect than
behavioural insight b. Simultaneously the stakeholder institution in which the experiment
is to be conducted wants the experiment to have the best overall effect possible using the
least amount of resources. From this perspective, the stakeholder sees no reason to test
the basic control letter and insists that the experiment should only involve Groups 2
and 4. Such insistence is not farfetched as it may result from the legal obligations of the
stakeholder institution. Next, imagine that since insight a is expected to be most effective,
they ask for a to constitute Treatment A; adding the moral reason that as a public body
they are expected to provide the best service possible to the public. Provided this
scenario, what should the team do and why?
The intuitive thing to do here might be to go with the wish of the stakeholder. However,
this would be a mistake. If insight a is expected to have a large effect, and insight b only a
minor if any effect, then there is a good chance that the difference between Groups 2
and 4 will be so minuscule, that there will be no significant difference between the
2 results. Even worse, assuming that insight a had a marvellous effect, the team will not
even be capable of showing this. As the control group was annulled, all they will have to
point at is an insignificant difference between Groups 2 and 4. Thus, in this case, the team
should, as also mentioned earlier, first and foremost insist on retaining a control group. If
this is not possible, then the team should insist on testing the insight expected to be least
effective, i.e. b, as Treatment A.
Quasi-experiments – When randomisation is not possible

When conducted correctly, an RCT has the potential of demonstrating actual causal
relationships obtained between interventions and outcomes in the real world. However,
the real world does not always allow for the random allocation of people to experimental
groups without seriously distorting the target behaviour that the experiment no longer is
about the causal relationship intended. As a result, the quasi-experiment has become a
widespread alternative to RCTs in social experimentation.
The quasi-experiment is a research design involving an experimental approach more or
less identical to an RCT but where random allocation to treatment and control group has
not been used (Campbell and Stanley, 1963). Consequently, the equivalence between
groups cannot be guaranteed, resulting in a series of threats to the internal validity of the
experiment. For this reason, quasi-experiments are often portrayed as a second-best
choice to be considered when the behavioural intervention studied does not allow for the
random allocation to groups. Examples of valuable quasi-experimental designs include:
 Regression discontinuity (RD): where participants are assigned to treatment and
control groups based on a cutoff point of an assignment variable. The
discontinuity between the treatment and control trends is then measured.
 Propensity score matching (PSM): where participants in the treatment group are
paired to participants in the control group based on the similarity of their scores to
account for selection bias.
 Difference in differences: where the effect of a treatment or of a policy is
estimated by comparing the pre- and post-treatment differences in the outcome in
the treatment and control group
As some of the most relevant and interesting real-world behaviours, especially when it
comes to public policy, do not allow for randomisation, quasi-experiments should perhaps
be accepted as the realistic standard, rather than the alternative. If not, the very method of
experimentation may end up biasing what is studied experimentally – a bias, which is
already clearly detectable in BI, where experiments on conformity to messages sent by
letters and similar behaviours conducive to randomisation are massively overrepresented.
In addition, as the pioneers of experimental design, Cook and Campbell (1979) argued
even randomised controlled trials should be planned such as to be interpretable as quasi-
experiments, in case something goes wrong with the randomised design, as it often does
in the real world. On the negative side, this means that a series of precautionary measures
should always be taken relative to the design of the experiment as well as the analysis
planned. On the positive side, it usually means that additional information is collected, for
example, about the background of participants, allowing for more interesting analysis.
Quasi-experimental designs may thus be regarded as a natural starting point for
practitioners challenging them to think creatively about how to approximate random
allocation in the real world, rather than insist on creating a randomised sample when this
may introduce artificiality into the behaviour.
This conclusion is important for policymakers as they are usually the ones deciding what
BI intervention to fund and accept. The tendency amongst some researchers and
practitioners to portray RCTs as the only way of working scientifically with BI would be
a distortion and limitation of the nature of how behavioural science actually works with
regards to testing interventions with actual relevance for public policy.
Learning “what works” from experiments

The only way researchers and practitioners can properly design an experiment is if they
can specify in advance the variables to be included and the experimental protocols to be
followed. For this to be possible researchers and practitioners must already have a
substantial conceptual grasp of the behaviour which the BI intervention tested is to be
applied to. In following a diagnostic method like BASIC, part of this conceptual grasp
should be in place. However, if developing experiments without a conceptual grasp of the
behaviour achieved through some sort of diagnostic effort experimentation might easily
prove a risky strategy, where precious resources may be wasted and citizens used as
participants in haphazard experiments.
More importantly in this connection, without such a conceptual grasp of the target
behaviour, practitioners will end up learning nothing about what works from testing BI
interventions through experimentation – they will only be able to say what worked in the
particular experiment carried out. This is because an experiment in and by itself only
shows that a particular intervention caused a certain outcome (causal description), but
reveals nothing about the actual mechanisms by which it did so (causal explanation) –
except in so far the experiment is deliberately designed to control for possible alternative
mechanisms (Robson and McCartan, 2016; Shadish, Cook and Campbell, 2002). If this is
not the case, practitioners will be in the blind as to how to generalise their findings from
“what worked” into those principles of “what works” that is to behaviourally inform
public policy. This is not a point to be dismissed as merely of “theoretical and academic
interest”. Carrying out components of experiments without a close eye to this issue
undermines the whole point of experimentation as well as the very possibility of
behaviourally informed public policy – to know “what works” means to know how it
works, for whom and under what conditions.
What was written at the beginning of the chapter thus takes on a new nuance. The reason
for conducting an experiment might be to find out whether making some intervention
(i.e. the manipulation of an independent variable) will cause an effect (i.e. a measurable
difference in one or more dependent variables). However, the reason why one chooses to
experiment is to find out how that knowledge can be used to inform future decisions. For
this to be possible, one also needs to determine through which mechanism a cause
produces its effect (mediator), under what conditions (boundary conditions), what may
moderate it (moderators) and what kind of relationship between cause and effect is
obtained (relationship). This latter “addition” is crucial. It is what allows practitioners to
generalise the findings of the experiment.
Generalising experimental findings

Another relevant aspect relative to generalising experimental finding is that of sample
size. Non-researchers sometimes think that the sample recruited for an experiment needs
to be representative of a population, and thus ideally comprise 1 000 or more participants
selected randomly from the wider population. This is due to their familiarity with
traditional methodologies such as representative surveys. However, while such vast and
representative samples would obviously be nice in an experiment, it is not necessary.
As just discussed, the point of an experiment is to test the causal effect of an intervention.
For this, it is not necessary to consider the sampled participants representativeness
relative to a larger population. Given the random allocation to groups as in an RCT as
well as strict control over the experimental setting, such that the groups differ only in the
intervention introduced to the treatment group, any subsequent difference between the
two groups must be an effect of the intervention. From this, it follows that the necessary
sample size for proving such an effect ultimately depends on the size of the effect and can
be calculated by a statistical method known as “power analysis” (see Box 2.10).
Yet, one should still pay attention to the composition of the sample featuring in an
experiment. This is because experimentation is concerned with drawing lessons that may
be generalised and the composition of the sample constrains the conclusions that may be
drawn from the measured effect of the intervention relative to the participants (what
worked) to the likely effect of the intervention on other people in the real world (what
works).
Importantly, similar points also hold true with regards to the context within which the
experiment took place; in particular, the conditions under which the causal relation was
produced, the mechanism that mediated cause and effect, and the potential moderators.
This is what was alluded to in Stage 1 when writing that BI is about behavioural insights.
One needs to identify the behavioural insights at work as defined there to provide
behaviourally informed policy advice. While issues about generalisability, such as
representativeness, is not a fundamental issue when designing experiments for
understanding “what worked”, it is a fundamental issue when designing experiments to
inform public policy about “what works”.
Box 2.10. Power analysis
The necessary sample size for proving an effect ultimately depends on the size of the
effect and can be calculated by a statistical method known as “power analysis”. Power
analysis allows one to perform a backwards calculation from the size of the effect to the
sample size needed to show this effect to be significant. A power analysis allows
researchers and practitioners to determine the sample size required to detect an effect of a
given size with the required degree of confidence. This means that how many participants
are needed for an experiment may be derived from knowledge of the effect and the
confidence level wanted. Of course, this creates something of a catch 22, as the eventual
estimated size of the effect can never be known until it has been shown. To some extent,
the mapping of a behavioural pattern done as part of BEHAVIOUR as well as piloting the
experiment (see Step 7 below) may give some clues about what to expect. However, a
better approach when applying BI to public policy may be to assume what effect size will
be acceptable for developing a larger policy intervention upon given the expected costs
and benefits potentially resulting from the intervention and then derive the number of
participants needed to detect such an effect with an acceptable probability. As conducting
power analyses can be quite technical, practitioners will often be well advised to seek out
external expertise on this matter.
Ultimately, generalisability is a complex area in scientific research. Two core strategies

for working with generalisability may, however, be mentioned here (Robson and
McCartan, 2016):
1. Direct demonstration is a strategy where researchers and practitioners try to
replicate an experiment, carry out further experiments with other types of
participants or conducts the experiment in a different context.
2. Making a case is a strategy where researchers and practitioners try to argue that it
is reasonable to expect the results will generalise due to the sample, setting or
mechanisms studied in the experiment.
The ABCD framework is in a sense an example of making a case by asserting that
systematic relationship between certain aspects of behavioural problems – Attention,
Belief formation, Choice and Determination – and particular solutions that are so robust
that they may be generalised. Still, when it comes to informing the design and
development of particular public policies, BASIC holds that making a case is mainly an
approach for identifying potential strategies to integrate into a policy intervention that
often needs to be tested at several levels relative to the target behaviour in the target
population to inform public policy in terms of a general behavioural policy principle.
Proving principle, practice and policy

Most of the experiments inspiring BI have traditionally taken place in laboratory settings.
A laboratory is an artificial place constructed with the sole purpose for researchers and
practitioners to control for almost all factors. This allows researchers and practitioners to
test very precisely the effect of a cause, support claims of mediators and manipulate
moderators in order to assess their impact of the effect as such a laboratory is the perfect
place to test for the existence and nature of a behavioural insight. In this way, laboratories
provide proofs of principle.
Proofs of principle. The necessary artificiality of laboratories challenges the

generalisability of their findings in two ways (Aronson, Brewer and Carlsmith, 1985).
First, laboratory experiments may lack experimental realism. This is the case if an
experiment fails to put participants in a real situation, such that it does not engage the
participants properly or has no real impact on them. Second, laboratory experiments may
lack mundane realism. This is the case if the participants encounter events in the
laboratory, which are very unlikely to occur in the real world. Third, the findings
discovered in a laboratory may easily be so fragile that they have no bearing in the noisy
world outside the laboratory.
Besides this, laboratories also invite certain biases into their findings. The two most
important of these are demand characteristics, which bias the behaviour observed in the
lab because participants know they are part of an experiment, that they are being
observed, and know that the behaviour they exhibit will be objects of interpretation.
Consequently, the behaviour observed will not only be influenced by the intervention, but
also by the participants’ interpretation of what effect the intervention is supposed to have
on them. The other one is, expectancy effects, which bias results through the practitioner’s
(usually unwittingly) expectations about finding support for the experimental hypothesis.
Taken in sum, these problems inherent in laboratory experiments may be argued in many
instances to undermine proofs of principle as direct sources for informing public policies.
Instead, a more fitting role for them may be argued to be that of informing the field
experiments, which in turn may inform public policies by providing proofs of practice.
Proofs of practice. Policies are supposed to work in the real world – not the artificial
world of the laboratory. In moving experiments out of the laboratory and into natural
settings, one minimises certain issues pertaining to the generalisability of findings. If
something works in a field experiment, it works in the real world – at least for the specific
intervention tested. Likewise, some of the biases liable to affect laboratory studies are
also avoided. For instance, in field experiments, participants will often not know that they
are participating in an experiment. Hence demand characteristics are minimised as well.
Finally, while laboratory experiments usually recruit participants amongst students, field
experiments tend to observe participants from groups that usually engage in the target
behaviour. As such, field experiments are the perfect setting to test the real-world
effectiveness of a BI intervention. In this way, field experiments provide proofs-of-
practice.
However, field experiments also present certain drawbacks. First and foremost, it will
often be difficult to allocate participants randomly such as to establish equivalent
experimental groups without essentially just moving the laboratory into the field.
However, with increased digitisation more and more target behaviours are becoming
conducive to random allocation in field experiments. If randomisation is not possible,
quasi-experiments is a second-best option. Also, interactions between participants in a
field experiment are not as rare as one would expect – when participants interact within
experimental groups as well as across experimental groups, it vitiates their random
assignment as well as violates their assumed independence. That said, perhaps the most
important problem of field experiments is that the loss of control relative to the laboratory
setting makes it difficult to get a sufficient conceptual grasp on details to allow for causal
explanations to be tested (see discussion above). Consequently, field experiments are
usually not sufficient by themselves for providing proofs-of-policy principles unless
specifically designed for this.
Box 2.11. Real world situations conducive to randomised experiments
1. When lotteries are expected.

2. When demand outstrips supply.
3. When an innovation cannot be introduced to everyone simultaneously.
4. When participants are isolated from each other.
5. When a tie can be broken.
6. When people express no preference among alternatives.
Source: Adapted from Cook, T. and D. Campbell (1979), Quasi-experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues
for Field Settings, https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/quasi-experimentation-design-and-
analysis-issues-for-field-settin; Robson, C. and K. McCartan (2016), Real World Research, https://www.wile
y.com/en-us/Real+World+Research%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781118745236 (accessed on 7 November 2018).
What then constitutes proof of policy, if neither laboratory experiments nor field
experiments may do this in and by themselves? A possible answer may be gathered from
Levitt and List (2005) who looked at the two approaches – lab and field – and concluded
that: “the sharp dichotomy sometimes drawn between lab experiments and data generated
in natural settings is a false one. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses, and a
combination of the two is likely to provide deeper insights than either in isolation”.
If this is the case, one may argue that proofs of generalisable policy principles are not to
be found in any single experiment, whether laboratory or field. A laboratory finding may
fail to generalise into the field, and a field experiment may fail to generalise across
contexts that may seem similar. Yet, by combining the two strategies, laboratory
experiments may deliver insights into the causal relationships needed to generalise
successfully across real-world settings (what works); and field experiments may deliver
the generalisation from the laboratory to the field to show what of what works also works
in the real world. In particular, building up evidence through iterated experimentation
may provide the behavioural insights that may ultimately be used to inform public policy.
The main steps for carrying out a BI experiment

1. Integrate strategies into a prototype policy intervention. Integrate the
principles you identified as potential STRATEGIES (Stage 3) for influencing the
target behaviour into a prototype intervention that could realistically be
implemented as part of public policy.
2. Collect feedback for improving your prototype intervention. Consider whom
to involve and how, including people from the target group of the intervention, to
get valuable input and feedback on the proto-type intervention. When done, make
revisions and iterate the process starting from (1) until you feel ready to proceed
to (3).
3. Determine the variables of the experiment. Determine what variables
potentially, realistically and ethically may be manipulated and measured,
including background variables, independent, dependent and proxy variables.
4. Select experimental setting and design. Determine which kind of experiment

(field or laboratory) and which kind of experimental design is feasible for testing
the effect of the prototype intervention given the constraints set by the project, the
involved institutions and the real world. In particular, against this background,
also determine what sample size is necessary for detecting an effect size
sufficiently large to justify running an experiment.
5. Develop experimental protocols for testing interventions. Develop an
experimental protocol for testing the intervention, including procedures for
sampling, data collection and data analysis and share this with relevant people –
researchers as well as BI and policy practitioners – to get feedback and input for
making necessary revisions. When done, make revisions to the protocol and
iterate this step until you feel ready to proceed to (6).
6. Obtain approval and pre-register your experiment. Consider pre-registering
the study and whether to get approval from an ethical review board is necessary as
well as what legal resources to consult attached to the institutions involved in the
project. Consider also whether to involve people from the target group of the
intervention in getting input and feedback on the ethical aspects of the
intervention. In particular, define potential “ABORT” conditions.
7. Conduct a pilot-experiment. Conduct a pilot or pre-test of the prototype as well
as important aspects of the protocol, so as to examine: i) whether institutional,
technical and systemic aspects work out as expected; ii) what challenges to time
schedules and other unforeseen factors might reveal themselves in the process; iii)
potential indicators of what effect size of the intervention to expect; iv) the
feasibility of the planned data analysis; and v) whether revisions to the prototype
and the protocol are needed – thus returning the process to (5) – before continuing
to (8).
8. Carry out the experiment. Use the advice located at the beginning of this section
to determine your final experimental method and follow appropriate standards for
rigorous experimental methods.
9. Analyse the result. Follow the planned analysis as described in the protocol and
discuss any possible changes to this with relevant researchers, the ethical review
board (if involved) as well as the project advisory board if this has been
established.
10. Writing up the experiment: procedure, results and perspective. Write up a
report on the experiment independent of the result and register this in the relevant
databases.
Ethical guidelines for testing behaviourally informed policies (INTERVENTION)

The stage of INTERVENTION is unavoidably one that intervenes in people’s lives by
manipulating independent variables to observe how this systematically affects the
behaviour of participants. In addition, experimentation invariably involves targeting
groups of people differentially, often effecting some groups of people with a treatment
that one has reason to believe will positively affect their lives, while withholding this
treatment from at least one other group. Hence, it is not surprising that ethical issues need
to be considered from the very beginning of designing an experiment over its
implementation, completion and on reporting its results.
Considering ethics relative to INTERVENTION is usually done by consulting three sources

(Shadish, Cook and Campbell, 2002):
 Ethical codes of conduct.
 Informed consent.
 Institutional review boards (IRBs).
The behavioural literature and associations refer to experimental disciplines that for years
have devised important resources for addressing these three points. However, it is
important to notice that particular ethical codes of conduct, guidelines and procedures are
not always uniformly applicable to all types of experimental research. They have mostly
been developed to serve in medical research and other areas, such as BI, and have
different needs and requirements. Hence, researchers and practitioners need to orient
themselves within standard ethical guidelines and codes as well as fit these to the special
circumstances they are working under.
Of the three sources of ethics relative to the stage of INTERVENTION, the latter
two sources were already addressed by the ethical guidelines sketched at the end of
ANALYSIS (Stage 2). Thus, practitioners new to experimentation need to consult those
guidelines carefully before embarking on running experiments.
The following guidelines relate to some key ethical and legal issues that one needs to
consider when running experiments with BI applied to public policy. They can be
summarised as:
 Be aware that interventions unavoidably intervene in people’s lives.
Experiments intentionally give one group a treatment that is believed to have a
positive impact, while withholding this treatment intentionally from another
group. You must orient yourself within the standard ethical guidelines and codes
that fit into the special circumstances of the behavioural project.
 Obtain appropriate legal consent and demonstrate the necessity of the
experiment. You should consider if the laws in your country deem
experimentation as legally permissible in public service. It may also be necessary
to demonstrate that the intervention will improve a policy situation, reveal
knowledge not currently known, provide necessary data, be used to inform policy
and protect the rights of individuals.
 Always consult experience. Make sure that experiments are conducted by people
with experience in experimental design, intervention and reporting to ensure
proper protocols are followed.
 Ensure justice, fairness and distributional impacts are considered. You need
to consider and address the potential ethical issues that arise from one group
receiving a treatment and the other not. This may require to deploy safety valves
for discontinuing the experiment for ethical reasons or compensating/offsetting
groups after the experiment.
 Take all measures to protect data privacy and confidentiality, as well as
ensure ethical data analysis. You should carefully consider using procedures
and protocols that ensure the confidentiality of participants, for instance, by using
randomised response methods or determining not to collect or connect any data
about potential identifiers. Ethical data analysis can be strengthened by
pre-registering studies, accounting for data outliers and truthfully reporting on

attrition, to strictly follow standards of statistics and their representation.
Table 2.8. Ethical guidelines for Stage 4: INTERVENTION
1. Consider whether legal permissions for experimentation should be obtained. Even though the law in some countries
views experimentation as a legitimate means of exploring public policy issues, practitioners should pay close attention to the
legal issues prompted by experimentation. For instance, most countries embrace the principle of equality of treatment
requiring that individuals who are similar in relevant ways should be treated similarly. Yet, experiments often require that
individuals who are similar in relevant ways should be treated differently. Thus, experimentation in public policy requires
researchers and practitioners to consider whether legal permission is needed and seek to acquire such permissions when
necessary.
2. Demonstrate the appropriateness and necessity of experimentation. Large differential effects between citizens cannot
be justified by appeals to some larger benefit to those who might receive improved policy in the future as a result (Shadish,
Cook and Campbell, 2002). Thus, before an experiment is conducted, it might be worth demonstrating that (Federal Judicial
Center, 1981):
• The current policy situation needs improvement.
• The effect of the proposed intervention for improvement is not already known.
• Only an experiment could provide the necessary data to clarify the question.
• The result of the experiment will be used to inform existing practices or policies.
• The right of individuals will be protected in the experiment.
3. Always consult experience. Make sure that new experimenters always consult people with experience in experimental
design, intervention and reporting to help generate suitable protocols for experimental designs, pre-tests and experimental
tests, including protocols for informed consent, debriefing and reporting. This is especially important to do with regards to any
deviation from customary practices for existing codes of conduct within the field in which the BI intervention is tested.
4. Consider justice, fairness and other ethical aspects when sampling. Interventions often treat people differentially by
withholding experimental treatments: treating some groups of people with a treatment that should positively affect their lives,
while withholding this treatment from at least one other group. Before considering how to deal with this kind of differential
treatment, just being part of the experimental sample means that one receives differential treatment relative to those people
not part of the sample frame. Practitioners need to consider and address the potential ethical issues arising from this kind of
differential treatment relative to sampling.
5. Deploy compensatory experimental designs if possible. While interventions often treat participants differentially,
certain features of experimental designs may compensate or offset some of those ethical issues that arise. The procedure of
randomisation may itself be regarded as such a feature, as participants by definition have equal chances for ending up in
each of the experimental groups. However, other features of experimental designs may also compensate or offset unequal
treatment. For instance, if suitable conditions are obtained, practitioners may opt for a crossover design, such that
experimental groups switch places as control and treatment groups. Another strategy is to opt for within-group designs such
as pre-test post-test designs, where the behavioural effect of a treatment on a group of participants is compared to the same
group’s behaviour before the treatment was devised.
6. Compensate or offset differential effects between groups. It is not always possible to deploy an experimental design
that compensates or offsets potential differential effects between groups, which raises ethical issues. In such cases,
practitioners may consider whether post-experimental measures for compensating or offsetting such effects are available.
For instance, participants in a group subject to negative differential effect relative to other groups may receive an extended
deadline or an additional reminder for complying with existing regulation. In other cases, participants may receive
compensatory benefits, such as educational advice, special options or first treatments to offset such effects. What makes up
compensatory or offsetting measures will depend on the specific purpose of an experiment.
7. Deploy routes for discontinuing experiments for ethical reasons. Plan in advance for ongoing experiments to be
halted if negative side effects unexpectedly occur or if one experimental group experiences dramatically better results than
another. This also requires that preliminary analyses at fixed intervals be planned that allows for prematurely discontinuing
the experiment for ethical reasons. While standard in medical research, this practice is just as important when devising
experiments for behaviourally informed policies.
8. Protect data privacy and confidentiality. As mentioned In Stage 1: BEHAVIOUR, BI projects often collect and connect
data in ways not usually done in public policy development and design. In addition, testing BI interventions may involve
further collection of data from participants who have agreed to be part of an experiment or study. It is important to observe
that the confidentially of research data is not necessarily protected by law – especially not when interventions are tested by
public authorities themselves. However, this does not permit practitioners to plan experiments, including when obtaining
consent, where participants are not guaranteed the kind of confidentiality guaranteed by the stated consent or expected by
citizens who decide to participate. For this reason, even when being employed within public organisations, practitioners
should carefully consider using procedures and protocols that ensure the confidentiality of participants, for instance, by using
randomised response methods or determining not to collect or connect any data about potential identifiers.
9. Ensure ethical data analysis. Statistical analysis may easily be tweaked to misrepresent findings in ways that misdirect
laymen, who tend to perceive numbers and statistics as objective facts. Practitioners are responsible for doing their best to
avoid misrepresentations, especially in BI where one cannot be excused by assuming that people ought to know better. This
guideline not only concerns the representation of data but also its analysis. It is thus important that researchers and
practitioners comply with principles for the ethical production and analysis in all aspects of handling data – from pre-
registering studies, over accounting for data outliers and truthfully reporting on attrition, to strictly follow standards of statistics
and their representation.
10. Preventing misrepresentation as best as possible. Even if all the guidelines above are followed, it is still part of the
scientific social responsibility of practitioners to do their best to prevent misrepresentations and overstretch of results. BI has
seen its fair share of misrepresentations and overstretches; simplifying mechanisms too much and overstretching lab findings
to explain almost any real-world phenomenon. For this reason, practitioners should not only make clear results and
conclusions but also the limits of these relative to the interpretation of real-world phenomena and what needs to be studied
further before drawing appealing conclusions.
Stage 5: CHANGE – Implementing behaviourally informed policies
Stage 5: CHANGE
When a BI project enters this stage, significant effort has been put into the BEHAVIOURAL
ANALYSIS in seeking to identify a target behaviour and understand why people act as they
do, identify effective and responsible behavioural insight STRATEGIES that match the
behavioural problem, and test a prototype policy INTERVENTION. The BI project enters
into Stage 5: CHANGE when tests have produced promising results and that a behavioural
insight can be developed into a full policy intervention – or when repeated failure brings
the project to an end and the community can learn from what did not work so that the BI
field can advance.
When
Obviously, without effective implementation of the successfully tested, behaviourally
informed policy, there will be little if any effect of the work done. Yet, CHANGE is also
the stage where the temporary communion of mutual interests of all those involved in the
BI project may dissolve with the potential result that nothing gets implemented, or what
gets implemented is very different from what was intended. To prevent this from
happening, Stage 5: CHANGE includes a series of tools and considerations relative to the
effective and successful implementation of behaviourally informed policy.
Milestone
The aim of CHANGE is to inform public policies about the findings from the project and
ensure that society gains the broadest possible value from the insights gained. BASIC
suggests that this is done by reaching the final five-point milestone:
1. Revisiting the political context and project level.
2. Implementing and scaling behaviourally informed policies.
3. Setting up monitoring of long-term and potential side effects.
4. Maintaining the policy initiative.
5. Disseminating knowledge widely.
Revisiting the political context and project level

The first step is to come full circle and revisit the policy context or policy challenge that
originally motivated the project, as well as the project brief that defined the approach and
scope of the project. In public policy situations and as interests change all the time,
ensuring that interventions as well as the process of implementation are aligned with the
current situation is key. Even though the priority filter in BEHAVIOUR tries to take
precautionary measures for such changes, a series of factors are still often seen to change,
with a potential relevance of interventions and their implementation. These include:
 Digitisation: Digital platforms and technologies develop at an ever-increasing
pace. Practitioners will often find that the programme software and digital
systems involved in a project may have changed and offer new constraints or
possibilities that need to be taken into account when developing a plan for
implementation. There are many examples of this problem in BI, where many
original projects have delivered behavioural insights into letters sent from public
bodies, only to find that those organisations transitioned into digitising their
communication at the same time. The same is currently the case in consumer
research, where projects about certain markets or consumer conditions are
overtaken by the development of digital markets.
 Policy interests: Political and policy interests sometimes change at an even faster
pace than technological development. Factors external as well as internal to the
project might have caused priorities to flip. New and pressing policy challenges
may have crowded out interest in the current project or the policy problem might
have developed into a more pressing concern and called for more immediate
action. Internally, the implementation of a BI project might suddenly be top of a
minister’s agenda if, for instance, the results are very promising; or interest may
have waned, also if the results were too meagre or technical to promote a public
agenda.
 Regulatory context: Regulations might have been passed that have rendered the
intervention superfluous or out of pace with the rules. The former is represented
by interventions designed for a behavioural problem, which since then have
become subject to legislative push (e.g. the problem at stake has been regulated
through traditional means) or legislative rollback (e.g. when a law is abrogated so
that the intervention is no longer relevant). The latter is even more important as
changes in the legal landscape might call for revisions in the design of the
intervention (e.g. when new data-protection rules require for changes in a digital
implementation).
 Institutional structure: The period where BI has emerged has also been one
where institutional reforms have been popular. Thus, it is crucial that practitioners
take institutional reforms, changes to structure and dynamics into account before
embarking on implementing a behaviourally informed policy intervention.
 Public opinion: Last, but certainly not least, any plan for implementing a
behaviourally informed policy intervention needs to take changes in public
attitudes and sentiments into account. Cases with relevancy to the policy
challenge or policy problem addressed by the project may have received
considerable public attention during the execution of the BI project, which means
that the policy intervention suggested by the project needs to be implemented
with an eye to this. Thus, the practitioner should consider consulting on the
proposed intervention with citizens, businesses, non-profit organisations and other

affected groups to get a view into how the policy intervention might be received
and, equally important, perceived, from comments on the proposed intervention,
as well as to gain further support up front from these stakeholders.
Besides looking into the potential factors with potential relevance for the behaviourally
informed intervention and its implementation, practitioners also need to revisit the
ambitions and scope of the original project brief. Although all changes that have been
made to the original project brief during its execution might have been acknowledged by
all relevant parties throughout the project, the implementation plan still needs to take the
original brief into account to make sure how what is to be done next connects with the
original idea behind the project. In particular, the implementation and next steps should
revisit the ambitions, which pertained to the project relative to its level (see above):
 Institutional level projects aimed to apply BI to a wider institutionalised domain
to provide an understanding of how this approach may help to transform public
policy development and/or delivery. The ambition is thus to explore the
“institutional fit” of BI, so to speak, by: i) providing knowledge about the
institutional potential and relevant processes and methods involved when working
with BI; ii) carrying out interventions that may serve as proof-of-concept; and
iii) identifying the possible institutional obstacles that working with BI presents to
the particular institution and its domain.
 Strategic level projects aimed to apply BI to one or more issues from a defined
list of existing policy problems that challenge a particular institutional domain or
sector. The ambition is thus to deliver viable and effective policy insights and
solutions which are cost-effective compared to alternative policy measures by:
i) extending existing knowledge about BI and building capacity for this within the
institution; ii) applying the lessons learned from former institutional projects to
strategic level problems to test for their robustness; and iii) providing scalable
long-term solutions to one or more existing policy issues.
 Behavioural level projects aimed to apply BI directly to a specific behavioural
problem in the institutional domain or sector. Policymakers, stakeholders and
collaborators usually assume that the tools and methods for applying BI in public
policy design and delivery are more or less fully developed. Thus, behavioural
level projects are expected to fully integrate into the everyday decisions and
processes of institutional work. The success criteria of projects at this level will
usually be: i) smooth integration of process; ii) “problem solved”, not “lesson
learned”; and iii) easily communicable results.
It is important that the stage of implementation begins by revisiting these aspects of the
project, so as to ensure that the implementation of any ensuing behaviourally informed
policy intervention is adapted to the current policy context as well as aimed at delivering
on those ambitions that originated the project.
Implementing and scaling behaviourally informed policies

Having revisited the policy context and the project level, the next step of CHANGE is to
decide on plans for implementing, scaling and evaluating the behaviourally informed
policy change suggested by the four initial stages of BASIC. Such plans are incredibly
important. The first decade of behavioural public policy has revealed that many BI
projects fail to go beyond proof-of-practice to truly inform public policy through their
actual policy implementation as well as by feeding the resulting policy situation back into
the beginning of the policy cycle for further improvement.
 Consider good regulatory and policymaking practices. The intervention being
developed could lead to a new programme or a change to a law, regulation or
regulatory regime. For instance, the OECD worked with the Colombian
Communications Regulator to re-design the consumer protection regime with the
help of behavioural insights (OECD, 2016). In these situations, the policymaker
and practitioner should consider good regulatory and policymaking practices,
such as regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) and stakeholder engagement, as a
means of embedding the BI-informed interventions into existing decision-making
tools, further measuring the potential impact of the proposed intervention and
offering citizens, businesses and other affected parties a chance to provide their
inputs (OECD, 2014; 2018).
 Actively use behavioural insights to inform implementation and scaling. In
drafting plans for implementing, scaling and evaluating a policy solution,
policymakers and practitioners should actively use behavioural insights to inform
these plans. Considering strategies such as “make it relevant” or “devise plans and
feedback” relative to this stage is important. Also, a behaviourally informed
policy will always have been tested in a more specific or limited area than that to
be covered by the policy. Thus, considering how the results might fail to
generalise when scaled, for example, through a “post-mortem” and then devise
plans to take results into account would also be a good strategy when
implementing behaviourally informed policies. These are but two of many ways
that researchers and practitioners may consider applying BI to inform the stage of
CHANGE.
 Implement experimentally and scale incrementally. Besides actively using BI
to inform the implementation, scaling and evaluation, to actively use BI as part of
CHANGE, policymakers and practitioners should also devise plans in accordance
with the methodological underpinnings of this. Traditionally policies are rolled
out across the board when implemented. But adopting a BI approach to CHANGE
means adopting an experimental approach to the implementation and an
incremental approach when scaling up behaviourally informed policies. This also
requires keeping track of the dependent measures used for the experimental
evaluation as part of INTERVENTION as well as adding additional measures made
possible by the policy being scaled up. This allows keeping close track of various
moderating variables as part of implementation. Thus, through the
implementation and scaling up of a behaviourally informed policy, policymakers
and practitioners may study whether certain groups are more or less affected than
what was suggested by tests as part of INTERVENTION. This, in turn, may lead to
further iterations and tweaks in the design of the policy in question.
 Avoid diluting behavioural policies by carefully monitoring implementation.
A recurring problem experienced in the stage of CHANGE is that behavioural
policies may become diluted. This occurs because of the often counter-intuitive
nature of behaviourally informed interventions. To third parties usually working
in a rationality-based policy perspective, crucial contextual features and other
aspects of a behaviourally informed policy, might not seem important or be
perceived as in conflict with a traditional approach to policymaking. In an
illustrating case, a Danish distributor of public communication cancelled the use
of pink paper for a letter, as it seemed unimportant. However, when trialled in

Singapore, pink paper was found to have a positive effect on how many people
complied with the message. Another common situation is when public servants or
staff decide that it is not necessary to follow the procedures devised as part of a
behavioural intervention as this is not perceived to be important (see for example
Martin, Bassi and Dunbar-Rees, 2012). To avoid such situations, it is important to
plan and follow the BI intervention all the way through the policy cycle.
Monitoring long-term and potential side effects

Experiments that test the potential effects of behaviourally informed policies will always
be limited in time and scope. In particular, most experiments in the BI literature have
been one-shot or very limited in timespan. This is unfortunate and practitioners should
aim to negotiate interventions where trials provide some confidence of effects over time
and across relevant domains. However, when this has not been the case, the long-term
effects and potential side effects of such experiments will be unknown when entering the
stage of CHANGE.
As mentioned above, implementing and scaling a behaviourally informed policy offers an
opportunity for practitioners to keep a close track of various moderating variables as part
of implementation. However, when drafting plans for CHANGE, practitioners should also
put a special emphasis on the necessity of establishing measures for and then monitoring
potential long-term effects.
Box 2.12. Examples of monitoring behaviourally informed policy solutions
UKBIT found that employees, who successfully had been prompted to charitable giving
the previous year, had reverted to the original level of giving when receiving the same
treatment the following year (The Behavioural Insights Team, 2015).
An experiment to nudge travellers in an airport to smoke in designated smoking zones,
showed no decrease in effect for well-maintained interventions when doing a follow-up
study three years after the intervention was put in place (Schmidt, Schuldt-Jensen and
Hansen, 2017).
Sources: The Behavioural Insights Team (2015), The Behavioural Insights Team: Update Report 2013-2015,
http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/BIT_Update-
Report-Final-2013-2015.pdf (accessed on 7 November 2018); Schmidt, K., J. Schuldt-Jensen and P. Hansen
(2017), “Rygeadfærd i BASICperspektiv: En case fra Københavns Lufthavne om adfærdsdiagnosticering og
langtidsvirkning af adfærdsinterventioner”, Økonomi og Politik, Vol. 90(4), pp. 54-65.
Likewise, it is important to monitor for unexpected side effects. This is illustrated by an

experiment by UKBIT conducted in the United States. In a letter trial with “[name] you
need to open this” handwritten on the envelope, return rates for failed deliveries were
higher (not large enough though to determine if significantly so) for envelopes with
handwriting on.
For these reasons, plans for implementing, scaling and evaluating the policies resulting
from a BI project should always include specific plans for monitoring long-term as well
as potential side effects. This may be done by integrating an ex post evaluation or review
of a given policy as a required step of the policymaking process. In this way, evaluations
or reviews will help ensure the quality of policy over time as well as help to generate new
data that can highlight deficiencies, which can be addressed by new behaviourally
informed policy initiatives.
Thus, when constructing the policy, researchers and practitioners should consider
including provisions that require evaluations or reviews to take place. For example,
“programmed reviews” can be included which impose a sunset requirement as a failsafe
mechanism to ensure the policy remains fit-for-purpose over time or a post-
implementation review that requires an evaluation after a given time. In the BI space,
there could be an additional moral imperative for including such provisions, as arguments
about the contentious nature of using psychology in policymaking may be limited by
assurances that the given policy will be reviewed to mitigate potential negative long-term
effects.
Maintaining the policy initiative

Different from efforts directed at changing public attitudes or cultural perceptions but
similar to traffic signs and data systems, behaviourally informed policies are usually only
effective as long as the intervention is maintained. The study of behaviourally designed
smoking zones just mentioned above also showed that for those zones, which were not
properly maintained behavioural effects, had a decrease relative to their decline (Schmidt,
Schuldt-Jensen and Hansen, 2017). Such a lack of maintenance – whether physical or
systemic – is common for BI interventions for the same reasons that BI interventions are
at risk of being diluted during implementation. Maintenance of BI interventions may be
neglected because features may appear as unimportant or may be in conflict with what
seems necessary from a more rational perspective.
As part of securing the continued maintenance of behaviourally informed policies and
interventions, plans for implementing and scaling should, therefore, include instructions
for the proper maintenance – physical or systemic – of the policy. As an illustration of
what happens when this is not done is provided from a Norwegian intervention, which
successfully nudged consumers to buy more energy efficient domestic appliances by
showing the lifetime costs of these next to the sale prices. In this experiment, the
behavioural effects returned to normal, as new staff were not being trained in the role
intended for the showing of lifetime costs as part of the sales situation (Kallbekken,
Sælen and Hermansen, 2013). To avoid problems with maintaining a policy initiative
over time, practitioners should consider what audiences need to be involved in the
maintenance and produce material and instructions that fit these audiences and the
situations in which this material is to be used.
Disseminating knowledge widely

It has only been a decade since BI became popular in policymaking. Thus, it is not
surprising that it is only recently that outlets and standards for reporting on BI projects
have begun to emerge. While the idea of disseminated results widely is expected in the
behavioural sciences, it is still not a widespread practice in most public institutions – not
even those where the idea of evidence-based policy has existed for a while. As a result,
many early BI projects were not reported at all or only for internal use. In particular, null
results have not been widely publicised leading to publication bias. Also, the lack of
standards has led to non-transparent reporting; reporting without moderators; reporting
only in local languages; overstatement of effects, savings and revenues; and
understatement of true costs (see, for example, OECD, 2017 and Osman et al., 2018).
For this reason, it is crucial that researchers and practitioners participate, support and
systematically share and report their work in national as well as international networks of
researchers and practitioners. Stage 5: CHANGE should include allocating resources for
writing up work and publishing this in academic journals or other approved outlets.
Finally, practitioners working within BI should also make an effort at supplying
information and transparency in data to the various current efforts at providing publicly
available databases of BI projects.
Relative to the policy side, it should also be remembered that BI is an evidence-
generating approach that seeks to de-bias future decisions by policymakers. Thus, it is
just as important to share results with the community of policymakers to facilitate peer
learning and better decision-making throughout government. This also includes
communicating upwards to the political leadership to gain support for future interventions
or further capability building for BI in the public sector.
Ethical guidelines for implementing behaviourally informed policy (CHANGE)

Like for the other four stages in BASIC, researchers and practitioners should also observe
a series of ethical guidelines in the stage of CHANGE. Some key ethical guidelines when
working with CHANGE are summarised below:
 Adhere to principles of proper stakeholder engagement. Make sure to involve
public bodies, staff, citizens, businesses and other affected parties, that they are
properly consulted and that the results of this consultation are clearly
communicated.
 Follow principles of transparency and accountability. Results of experiments
and consultations should be shared with executive and legislative branches, as
well as with broader society. This includes ensuring proper credit is given to the
policymakers and government agencies who ran the experiments.
 Report on what works, and what does not. This is an important part of research
so that both academics and other policymakers can learn from their efforts. This
includes reporting on null results and unexpected effects to avoid exposing
citizens to interventions that have already been shown to fail.
 Monitor long-term and side effect. In implementing behaviourally informed
interventions, researchers and practitioners also have the responsibility for
devising plans that monitor effects to protect citizens from potential negative
consequences.
Table 2.9. Ethical guidelines for Stage 5: CHANGE
1. Involve stakeholders in CHANGE. Good regulatory practice calls for active stakeholder engagement, if possible and
suitable when implementing and scaling behaviourally informed policies. Make sure to involve public bodies, staff, citizens,
businesses and other parties affected by the proposed policy. Policies should always serve and respect the citizens, and the
extended trust they put in government should never be assumed or taken for granted.
2. Adhere to principles of transparency and accountability: Transparency in BI is an important discussion in the
behavioural community (see Hansen and Jespersen, 2013). Researchers and practitioners need to consider the appropriate
procedures and requirements for transparency and accountability to the executive and legislative branches of government,
as well as the broader society.
3. Give credit where credit is due. A lot of work in BI is commissioned work carried out or supported by smaller
governmental agencies or non-governmental units. If wanting to accept the ethos of behavioural science, this means that
policymakers and governmental agencies should give credit where credit is due.
3. Always report on null results and unexpected effects. To learn, one not only needs to know what works and why, but
also what did not work. While agreement about and resources devoted to publishing null results as well as unexpected
effects should be secured already as part of BEHAVIOUR, it is at this point that those obligations need to be adhered to. Thus,
always report on null results and unexpected effects to avoid exposing citizens to interventions that have already been shown
to fail.
4. Monitor for long-term and side effects. While we have already mentioned that monitoring for long-term and side effects
is part of good practice in the stage of CHANGE, this should also be done for ethical reasons. In implementing behaviourally
informed interventions, researchers and practitioners also have the responsibility for devising plans for monitoring long-term
and side effects to protect citizens from the potential negative consequences of these.
5. Carefully examine individual and social moderators where feasible. BI has become famous for reporting on significant
behavioural effects caused by implementing minor and seemingly insignificant changes into public policy. Less attention has
been paid to individual and social moderators causing variance in these effects. While an increase in a positive behaviour
should always be welcomed, it is just as important to ensure that specific individuals and groups do not pay a negative price
for the average improvement. Hence, researchers and practitioners should always carefully examine individual and social
moderators as part of implementing and scaling behaviourally informed policy.
References
Adams, P., et al. (2018), “Time to act: A field experiment on overdraft alerts,” Financial Conduct
Authority, Occasional Paper 40, https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/occasional-papers/occasional-
paper-40.pdf
Allcott, H. (2011), “Social norms and energy conservation”, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 95(9-10),
pp. 1082-1095, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.03.003.
Aronson, E., M. Brewer and J. Carlsmith (1985), “Experimentation in social psychology”, in L. Gardner
and E. Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, Random House, New York.
Australian Government Department of Health (2018), “Nudge vs Superbugs: A behavioural economics
trial to reduce the overprescribing of antibiotics June 2018”,
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/Nudge-vs-Superbugs-behavioural-
economics-trial-to-reduce-overprescribing-antibiotics-June-2018 (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Axelsson, S. and K. Åström (2012), Everyone Earns a Paper Fee,
https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/nyheter/alla-tjanar-pa-en-pappersavgift (accessed on
7 November 2018).
Balgvig, F. and L. Holmberg (2014), “Flamingoeffekten: Sociale misforståelser og social pejling”, Djøf
Forlag.
BEAR (2018), How Should Organizations Best Embed and Harness Behavioural Insights? A Playbook,
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/-/media/files/programs-and-
areas/bear/white-papers/bear_biinorgs.pdf?la=en (accessed on 6 November 2018).
Berkowitz, A. and H. Perkins (1987), “Current issues in effective alcohol education programming”, in
J. Sherwood (ed.), Alcohol Policies and Practices on College and University Campuses, National
Association of Student Personnel Administrators Monograph Series, Columbus, OH.
Bertrand, M. et al. (2010), “What’s advertising content worth? Evidence from a consumer credit
marketing field experiment”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 125(1), pp. 263-305,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2010.125.1.263.
BPS (2018), Code of Ethics and Conduct, The British Psychological Society,
https://www.bps.org.uk/sites/bps.org.uk/files/policy/policy%20-
%20files/bps%20code%20of%20ethics%20and%20conduct%20%28updated%20july%202018%29.p
df.
Brown, C.L. and A. Krishna (2004), “The skeptical shopper: A metacognitive account for the effects of
default options on choice”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 31(3), pp. 529-539.
Campbell, D. and J. Stanley (1963), Experimental and Quasi-experimental Design for Research, Rand
McNally and Company, Chicago.
Chater, N. (2018), The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind.
Cho, R. (2013), Making Green Behavior Automatic, Climate, General Earth Institute, Colombia
University, https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/05/23/making-green-behavior-automatic/ (accessed on
7 November 2018).
Cook, T. and D. Campbell (1979), Quasi-experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings,
Houghton Mifflin,
https://www.scholars.northwestern.edu/en/publications/quasi-experimentation-design-and-analysis-
issues-for-field-settin (accessed on 7 November 2018).
DellaVigna, S. (2009), “Psychology and economics: Evidence from the field”, Journal of Economic
Literature, Vol. 47(2), pp. 315-72, https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jel.47.2.315.
Dinner, I. et al. (2011). “Partitioning default effects: Why people choose not to choose”, Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol. 17(4), pp. 332-341, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024354.
Drexler, A., G. Fischer and A. Schoar (2014), “Keeping it simple: Financial literacy and rules of thumb”,
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 6(2), pp. 1-31,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/app.6.2.1.
Duflo, E., M. Kremer and J. Robinson (2011), “Nudging farmers to use fertilizer: Theory and
experimental evidence from Kenya”, American Economic Review, Vol. 101(6), pp. 2350-2390,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.6.2350.
Ethics Committee of the British Psychological Society (2018), Code of Ethics and Conduct, British
Psychological Society, Leicester, www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/bps-code-ethics-and-conduct.
European Commission (2014), “Taking consumer rights into the digital age: over 507 million citizens
will benefit as of today”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-655_en.htm
European Commission (2013), “Antitrust: Commission fines Microsoft for non-compliance with browser
choice commitments”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-196_en.htm
European Commission (2009), “Antitrust: Commission accepts Microsoft commitments to give users
browser choice”, Press Release, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-1941_en.htm (accessed on
7 November 2018).
Evans, J.S.B. (2008), “Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition”, Annual
Review Psychology, Vol. 59, pp. 255-278,
www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093629.
Evans-Pritchard, B. (2013), Aiming to Reduce Cleaning Costs by Blake Evans-Pritchard (Works That
Work Magazine), https://worksthatwork.com/1/urinal-fly (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Federal Judicial Center (1981), Experimentation in the Law: Report of the Federal Judicial Center
Advisory Committee on Experimentation in the Law, Federal Judicial Center, Washington, DC,
https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/2012/ExperLaw.pdf (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Frey, B. and R. Jegen (2001), “Motivation crowding theory”, Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol. 15(5),
pp. 589-611, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6419.00150.
Gawronski, B., J.W. Sherman and Y. Trope (eds.) (2014), Dual-process Theories of the Social Mind,
Guilford Publications, New York.
Gigerenzer, G. (1991), “From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery in cognitive psychology”,
Psychological Review, Vol. 98(2), pp. 254-267,
https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/volltexte/institut/dok/full/gg/fromtool/fromtool.pdf (accessed on
7 November 2018).
Goldstein, N., S. Martin and R. Cialdini (2015), Yes!: 60 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion., Profile
Books.
Gollwitzer, P. (1999), “Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans”, American
Psychologist, Vol. 54(7), pp. 493-503.
Gollwitzer, P. and V. Brandstätter (1997), “Implementation intentions and effective goal pursuit”,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 73(1), pp. 186-199.
Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2016), “Why behavioural policy needs mechanistic evidence”, Economics and
Philosophy, Vol. 32(3), pp. 463-483, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267115000425.
Habyarimana, J. and W. Jack (2011), “Heckle and chide: Results of a randomized road safety
intervention in Kenya”, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 95(11-12), pp. 1438-1446,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.JPUBECO.2011.06.008.
Halpern, D. (2015), Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference, Penguin
Random House UK, London.
Hansen, P.G. (2016), “The definition of nudge and libertarian paternalism: Does the hand fit the glove?”,
European Journal of Risk Regulation, Vol. 7(1), pp. 155-174.
Hansen, P.G. and A.M. Jespersen (2013), “Nudge and the manipulation of choice: A framework for the
responsible use of the nudge approach to behaviour change in public policy”, European Journal of
Risk Regulation, Vol. 4(1), pp. 3-28.
Hansen, P. et al. (2016), “Apples versus brownies: A field experiment in rearranging conference
snacking buffets to reduce short-term energy intake”, Journal of Foodservice Business Research,
Vol. 19(1), pp. 122-130,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15378020.2016.1129227.
Hertwig, R. (2017). “When to consider boosting: Some rules for policy-makers”, Behavioural Public
Policy, Vol. 1(2), pp. 143-161.
ideas42 (2017), Define, Diagnose, Design, Test, http://www.ideas42.org/blog/first-step-towards-solution-
beta-project/ (accessed on 6 November 2018).
iNudgeyou (2015), Nudging Hospital Visitors’ Hand Hygiene Compliance,
https://inudgeyou.com/en/nudging-hospital-visitors-hand-hygiene-compliance/ (accessed on
7 November 2018).
IRS (2017), “Behavioral Insights Toolkit”, US Internal Revenue Service, https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
soi/17rpirsbehavioralinsights.pdf.
Johnson, E.J., S. Bellman, and G.L. Lohse (2002), “Defaults, Framing, and Privacy: Why Opting In-
Opting Out,” Marketing Letters, Vol. 13 (1), pp. 5-15.
Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky (1979), “Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk”,
Econometrica, Vol. 47(2), p. 263, http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1914185.
Kallbekken, S., H. Sælen and E. Hermansen (2013), “Bridging the energy efficiency gap: A field
experiment on lifetime energy costs and household appliances”, Journal of Consumer Policy,
Vol. 36(1), pp. 1-16, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10603-012-9211-z.
Kluger, A.N. and A. DeNisi (1996), “The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical
review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory”, Psychological
Bulletin, Vol. 119/2, pp. 254-284, https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1996-02773-003.
King, D. et al. (2014), “Redesigning the ‘choice architecture’ of hospital prescription charts: A mixed
methods study incorporating in situ simulation testing”, BMJ Open, Vol. 4(12), p. e005473,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005473.
Larrick, R. and J. Soll (2008), “ECONOMICS: The MPG Illusion”, Science, Vol. 320(5883),
pp. 1593-1594, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1154983.
Lepenies, R. and M. Małecka (2019), “The ethics of behavioural public policy”, in A. Lever and
A. Paoma, The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy, Routledge, New York.
Levitt, S. and J. List (2005), “What do laboratory experiments tell us about the real world?”, Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Vol. 21,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248419698_What_Do_Laboratory_Experiments_Tell_Us_
About_the_Real_World (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Linkenbach, J. and H.W. Perkins (2003), “Misperceptions of peer alcohol norms in a statewide survey of
young adults”, in H.W. Perkins (ed.), The Social Norms Approach to Preventing School and College
Age Substance Abuse, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Loewenstein, G. (1996), “Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior”, Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes, Vol. 65(3), pp. 272-292, https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1996.0028.
Lunn, P. (2014), Regulatory Policy and Behavioural Economics, OECD Publishing, Paris,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264207851-en.
Marchionni, C. and S. Reijula (2019), “What is mechanistic evidence, and why do we need it for
evidence-based policy?”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Vol. 73, pp. 54-63,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368118300311.
Martin, S., S. Bassi and R. Dunbar-Rees (2012), “Commitments, norms and custard creams – A social
influence approach to reducing did not attend (DNAs)”, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,
Vol. 105(3), pp. 101-104, http://dx.doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.2011.110250.
Milkman, K.L. et al. (2012), “Following through on good intentions: The power of planning prompts”,
HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP12-024, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University,
http://web.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=8410.
Milkman, K.L. et al. (2011), “Using implementation intentions prompts to enhance influenza vaccination
rates”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 108(26), pp. 10415-10420,
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1103170108.
Miller, J. and J. Krosnick (1998), The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes, Oxford
University Press, American Association for Public Opinion Research,
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2749662.
Mischel, W. (2014), The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-control and How to Master It, Random
House,
https://books.google.fr/books?id=pg2rawaaqbaj&dq=mischel+2014&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Moriarty, T. (1975), “Crime, commitment, and the responsive bystander: Two field experiments”,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 31(2), pp. 370-376,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0076288.
Mullainathan, S. and E. Shafir (2013), Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Times Book,
New York,
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/publications/books/scarcity-why-having-too-little-means-so-
much (accessed on 6 November 2018).
Norman, D. (1988), The Psychology of Everyday Things, Basic Books.
Nudge blog (2010), Measuring the LSD Effect: 36 Percent Improvement,
http://nudges.org/?s=lake+shore+drive (accessed on 7 November 2018).
O’Donoghue, T. and M. Rabin (1999), “Doing it now or later”, American Economic Review, Vol. 89(1),
pp. 103-124, http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.89.1.103.
OECD (2018), OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2018, OECD Publishing, Paris,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264303072-en.
OECD (2017), Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World, OECD
Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264270480-en.
OECD (2016), Protecting Consumers through Behavioural Insights: Regulating the Communications
Market in Colombia, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264255463-en.
OECD (2014), The Governance of Regulators, OECD Best Practice Principles for Regulatory Policy,
OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264209015-en.
Oliver, A. (2017), The Origins of Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108225120.
Orbell, S., S. Hodgkins and P. Sheeran (1997), “Implementation intentions and the theory of planned
behavior”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 23(9), pp. 945-954,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167297239004.
Osman, M. et al. (2018), “Learning lessons: How to practice nudging around the world”, Journal of Risk
Research, pp. 1-9, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2018.1517127.
Payne, J., J. Bettman and E. Johnson (1993), The Adaptive Decision Maker,
https://books.google.fr/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QzXFqwrPLXkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=Payne+et+al
+1993&ots=12OJ4hEw9n&sig=IoPa2VNZ9Adb98YypU4t84bwXuM#v=onepage&q=Payne%20et%
20al%201993&f=false (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Pichert, D. and K. Katsikopoulos (2008), “Green defaults: Information presentation and
pro-environmental behaviour”, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 28(1), pp. 63-73,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.JENVP.2007.09.004.
Pink, D. (2018), When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Penguin Publishing Group.
Read, D., G. Loewenstein and S. Kalyanaraman (1999), “Mixing virtue and vice: Combining the
immediacy effect and the diversification heuristic”, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making,
Vol. 12(4), pp. 257-273, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199912)12:4<257::AID-
BDM327>3.0.CO;2-6.
Robson, A. (2001), “The biological basis of economic behavior”, Journal of Economic Literature,
Vol. 39(1), pp. 11-33, http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jel.39.1.11.
Robson, C. and K. McCartan (2016), Real World Research, Wiley,
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Real+World+Research%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781118745236 (accessed
on 7 November 2018).
Sanders, M., M. Jackman and M. Sweeney (2017), Introducing Test+Build – A BI Venture, The
Behavioural Insights Team,
https://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/uncategorized/introducing-testbuild-a-bi-venture/ (accessed on
6 November 2018).
Sanders, M., V. Snijders and M. Hallsworth (2018), “Behavioural science and policy: Where are we now
and where are we going?”, Behavioural Public Policy, Vol. 2(2), pp. 144-167,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2018.17.
Schmidt, K., J. Schuldt-Jensen and P. Hansen (2017), “Rygeadfærd i BASICperspektiv: En case fra
Københavns Lufthavne om adfærdsdiagnosticering og langtidsvirkning af adfærdsinterventioner”,
Økonomi og Politik, Vol. 90(4), pp. 54-65.
Shadish, W., T. Cook and D. Campbell (2002), Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for
Generalized Causal Inference, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-
17373-000 (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Smets, K. (2018), “There is more to behavioural economics than biases and fallacies”, The Behavioural
Scientist, Vol. 24, https://behavioralscientist.org/there-is-more-to-behavioral-science-than-biases-and-
fallacies/.
Soman, D. (2015), The Last Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights,
University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
https://books.google.fr/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dh1kcgaaqbaj&oi=fnd&pg=pp1&dq=dilip+soman+201
5&ots=u4xy2vwq1s&sig=hxrjmn4sebsloanbirdi6ybmhp4#v=onepage&q=dilip%20soman%202015&
f=false (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Stanovich, K.E. (2012), “On the distinction between rationality and intelligence: Implications for
understanding individual differences in reasoning”, in The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and
Reasoning, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Stanovich, K.E. (2011), Rationality and the Reflective Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Stanovich, K.E. (2009), What intelligence tests miss: the psychology of rational thought. Yale University
Press
Stubbs, N. et al. (2012), “Methods to reduce outpatient non-attendance”, The American Journal of the
Medical Sciences, Vol. 344(3), pp. 211-219,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/MAJ.0b013e31824997c6.
Sunstein, C. and L. Reisch (2013), “Green by default”, Kyklos, Vol. 66(3), pp. 398-402,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12028.
Tanguy, B. et al. (2014), “The future in mind: Aspirations and forward-looking behaviour in rural
Ethiopia”,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2526352 (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Texas Department of Transportation (n.d.), “Don’t mess with Texas”, https://www.txdot.gov/inside-
txdot/media-center/psas/litter-pollution/dont-mess-with-texas.html (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Texas Times (2016), “Don’t mess with Texas”,
http://www.cbclandman.com/uploads/images/pdfs/2016%20-
%20don,t%20mess%20with%20texas,%20the%20real%20story.pdf (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Thaler, R. and C. Sunstein (2008), Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness,
Yale University Press.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2015), The Behavioural Insights Team: Update Report 2013-2015, The
Behavioural Insights Team, London, http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-
ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/bit_update-report-final-2013-2015.pdf.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2014), EAST Four Simple Ways to Apply Behavioural Insights, The
Behavioural Insights Team, https://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/bit-publication-east_fa_web.pdf.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2013), Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised
Controlled Trials, The Behavioural Insights Team,
https://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TLA-
1906126.pdf.
The Behavioural Insights Team (2010), MINDSPACE, The Behavioural Insights Team,
https://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/publications/mindspace/ (accessed on 6 November 2018).
The Danish Business Authority and Copenhagen Economics (2013), Nudging Business Policy: Making It
Easy to Do the Right Thing,
https://erhvervsstyrelsen.dk/sites/default/files/media/nudging-business-policy.pdf.
Titmuss, R. (1970), The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, Allen and Unwin,
London.
Tversky, A. (1972), “Elimination by aspects: A theory of choice”, Psychological Review, Vol. 79(4),
pp. 281-299, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0032955.
Tversky, A. and D. Kahneman (1974), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,
http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/teaching/Tversky_Kahneman_1974.pdf.
UK Government (n.d.), Check if a Document Allows Someone to Work in the UK - GOV.UK,
https://www.gov.uk/legal-right-work-uk (accessed on 7 November 2018).
Van der Plight, J. (2001), “Decision making, pyschology of,” International Encyclopedia of the Social &
Behavioral Sciences, pp. 3309-3315, https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/01750-2.
Van Kleef, E. and H.C. van Trijp (2018), “Methodological challenges of research in nudging”,
in Methods in Consumer Research, Vol. 1, pp. 329-349, Woodhead Publishing.
Volpp, K. et al. (2008), “Financial incentive-based approaches for weight loss”, JAMA, Vol. 300(22),
p. 2631, http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2008.804.
Wickens, C., S. Gordon and Y. Liu (1998), An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering, Longman.
World Bank (2015), The World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behaviour,
The World Bank, Washington, http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/worldbank/publications/wdr/
wdr%202015/wdr-2015-full-report.pdf.
ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION
AND DEVELOPMENT
The OECD is a unique forum where governments work together to address the economic, social and
environmental challenges of globalisation. The OECD is also at the forefront of efforts to understand and to
help governments respond to new developments and concerns, such as corporate governance, the
information economy and the challenges of an ageing population. The Organisation provides a setting
where governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good
practice and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies.
The OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea,
Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the
Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The European Union takes part in the work of the OECD.
OECD Publishing disseminates widely the results of the Organisation’s statistics gathering and
research on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as the conventions, guidelines and
standards agreed by its members.
OECD PUBLISHING, 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 PARIS CEDEX 16

ISBN 978-92-64-93555-6 – 2019
Tools and Ethics for Applied Behavioural Insights:
The BASIC Toolkit
Behavioural insights (BI) are lessons derived from the behavioural and social sciences, including decision
making, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, organisational and group behaviour. Public bodies around
the world are increasingly using BI to design and implement better public policies based on evidence of the
actual behaviour and biases of citizens and businesses. This toolkit provides practitioners and policy makers
with a step-by-step process for analysing a policy problem, building strategies, and developing behaviourally
informed interventions.
Consult this publication on line at https://doi.org/10.1787/9ea76a8f-en.

This work is published on the OECD iLibrary, which gathers all OECD books, periodicals and statistical databases.
Visit www.oecd-ilibrary.org for more information.
ISBN 978-92-64-93555-6
9HSTCQE*jdfffg+

10.2. OECD, 2019b PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

10.2. OECD, 2019b PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

10.2. OECD, 2019b PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Tools and Ethics for Applied

Behavioural Insights: The

Identify Analyse Design Test Scale

Please cite this publication as:

ISBN 978-92-64-93555-6 (print)

Photo credits: Cover © PureSolution/Shutterstock.com.

Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/about/publishing/corrigenda.htm.

Revenue Board, Malaysia; Robert Murphy, Department of Health, Ireland;

Abbreviations and acronyms .............................................................................................................. 11

Table 1.1. Applying BASIC to increasing enrolment in pension plans................................................. 18

Figure 1.1. The BASIC Framework ...................................................................................................... 17

Box 1.1. Additional BI resources .......................................................................................................... 19

Box 2.1. What are “Behavioural Insights” ............................................................................................ 44

Abbreviations and acronyms

ABCD Attention, belief formation, choice and determination

The “ABCD” of behavioural insights in public policy

How to use the BASIC toolkit

Chapter 1. Introductory guide to BASIC

Figure 1.1. The BASIC Framework

Table 1.1. Applying BASIC to increasing enrolment in pension plans

Stage Description Example

What you need to know before you keep reading

Table 1.2. Considerations before applying Behavioural Insights (BI)

What BI is What BI is not

As a reminder, the guide is by no means the only resource to apply BI to policymaking. In

Box 1.1. Additional BI resources

Below is a non-exhaustive list of widely referenced frameworks that complement BASIC

What are the behaviours driving the policy issue?

Figure 1.2. Example of a behavioural reduction

1. Write the policy area at the top.

2. Draw relevant strategic domains.

3. List as many concrete decisions,

Which behaviour(s) should you target?

Table 1.3. Sample questions for the priority filter questionnaire

Areas Sample questions

What is your desired policy outcome?

Figure 1.3. Example of a “SMART” outcome

The outcome is to increase savings by 20% upon receipt of income

Box 1.2. BI is a data-driven process

What is the context shaping target behaviours?

Table 1.4. Process tools to map behaviours

Tool Description Key features

Box 1.3. Map the “actual” behaviour

Introduction to “slow” and “fast” thinking

Figure 1.4. Distinction between “slow” and “fast” thinking

THINKING FAST THINKING SLOW

Table 1.5. Overview of ABCD framework

Aspect What rationality says What BI shows Example

Tip: Familiarise with the behaviour

Reminder: Flexible methodologies

Box 1.4. How are attention biases relevant to policymaking?

Box 1.5. How are belief formation biases relevant to policymaking?

1. What makes a given choice attractive to people?

Box 1.6. How are choice biases relevant to policymaking?

Box 1.7. How are determination biases relevant to policymaking?

Plan for inattention

Targeting belief formation

Figure 1.5. Arranging choices – Which do you prefer?

A. Which do you prefer? B. Which do you prefer now?