Is a transparent nudge a better one? The evidence paints a mixed picture

The worry is that nudges may bypass deliberate choice-making and leave people feeling manipulated by steering behaviour without their awareness. The most popular response is simply to tell people they are being nudged through a disclosure message attached to the intervention. But does disclosing a nudge actually make people feel more in control? And does it make the nudge any more effective?

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The Power and Peril of “Behavioural” in Public Policy

Research on behavioral public policy (BPP) has rapidly increased in the past decade, with a notable rise in publications from 891 articles (1980-2018) to 876 in just five years (2019-2024). The analysis reveals BPP's growing geographical diversity and engagement with contemporary issues. Additionally, BPP plays a critical role in policy legitimacy beyond intervention effectiveness.

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Why Don’t People Retrofit? Lessons from Behavioural Science and Community Co-Creation

Achieving net zero will require transforming the homes we already live in, improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Retrofitting will depend on technologies, finance, and infrastructure - and also on trust, participation, and collective ownership. It is about working with the people who live in them.

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Can behavioural policy build sustainable competencies? New evidence says yes

Boosts are behavioural interventions that improve decisions by teaching people simple skills. In sustainability, the main barrier is often not willingness, but know-how. Drawing on new evidence, Yavor Paunov argues that boosts can build lasting competences, helping people make sustainable choices even after the policy intervention itself is removed.

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From i-frame slogans to s-frame solutions: How counter-industry gambling messages can replace individual responsibility with systemic accountability

Messages like “gamble responsibly” frame gambling harms as a matter of individual responsibility. Counter-industry warnings such as “gambling products are designed to be addictive” instead highlight systemic drivers of harmful gambling. In this blogpost, Maira Andrade and Philip Newall show how policymakers could best use such counter-industry warnings.

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(Dis)embodied behavioural design? On embodiment’s effect on autonomy and agency

Decision-making is not just above-the-neck cognitive processing. It occurs within a specific, embodied human form who experiences the world in a physical way. This needs to be given due attention when designing and implementing behavioural interventions.

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Ought ≠ Is: No Evidence for an ‘Honesty Premium’ in Public Sector Culture

Does a public sector culture promotes honesty among workers?Through randomised trials in five countries, this research finds no evidence that activating a public sector identity reduces cheating. Policymakers should implement concrete measures for integrity instead of relying on assumed virtues

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Doing Behavioural Science More Collaboratively: Lessons from a Field Experiment

What happens when policy interventions are rolled out without engaging with those affected the most? Solutions that look good on paper but fail in practice. Collaboration is not just an ethical ideal, but a practical necessity for creating interventions that work in the real world.

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Sludge and the Behavioural Science of Friction

Sludge hinders people in achieving their objectives by making things harder. Sludge audits are increasingly popular, but where can and should sludge research go next?

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The Persuasive Effects of Narrative Entertainment

Edutainment can shape audiences’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. A meta-analysis of 77 experimental studies shows that the effects are real, nudging people in the intended direction.

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Why Policy Design Must Account for the Psychology of Compliance

Policies designed to encourage people to speak up – from whistleblower protections to conflict-of-interest disclosures – often fail because they address informational barriers, not social ones. Effective policy must reduce the social cost of dissent, not just permit it.

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The ‘rationality wars’ in BPP: Why they persist and how to move beyond them

Is Behavioural Public Policy (BPP) about correcting biased decisions or working with people’s adaptive heuristics? This blog argues the 'rationality wars' are not new, and the plurality of rationality can be an asset.

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Can a digital nudge clean up the streets? How Behavioural Science helped reduce littering in the UK

Littering is one of those persistent public problems that often feels unsolvable. Campaigns urging people to "do the right thing" rarely lead to lasting behaviour change, and enforcement is costly. A behaviourally-informed digital intervention is tested and shown to shift public habits more effectively.

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Getting people to the door, and through it: Lessons on improving take-up of public programs

Public programs often struggle to reach the people they are meant to help. In this blog post, Christian Schimpf, Vince Hopkins, Priscilla Fisher, and Jeff Dorion explain how behaviourally-informed email messages can successfully encourage enrolment in employment services.

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Promoting Our Better Angels in Public Life: Can we Nudge People Honest?

Much of public life is built on the assumption we act honestly with one another and with the state. But self-interest and wider perceptions of corruption and trust might lead to dishonest behaviour. Can we encourage more honesty through a simple nudge?

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Giving Workers a Voice Boosts Productivity

What if the secret to boosting productivity isn’t stricter rules or higher pay, but something as simple as giving workers a voice? Sherry Jueyu Wu shares a field experiment from the production floors of a Chinese factory, which asked whether participatory meetings – in which workers spoke and supervisors listened – could increase productivity. The answer is yes. These findings challenge conventional wisdom about hierarchy and efficiency, and suggest that voice may be a powerful yet underutilized tool for organizations.

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Beyond Simplistic Narratives: The META-BI Framework for Nudges in Behavioural Public Policy

When we talk about behavioural interventions, we often need to simplify complex concepts, but this can leave critical questions unanswered. The META-BI framework provides shared terminology to foster clearer and more productive behavioural science discussions, across disciplines and with practitioners.

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How Can We Personalise Nudges?

A one-size-fits-all approach to nudging can be ineffective, or even backfire. Personalising nudges is a way of recognising and acting upon known heterogeneity across and within groups of people to deliver successful behaviour change.

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Algorithms and Autonomy: Regulating Recommender Systems in the Age of Hyper-Nudging

Recommender systems are online algorithms that can help users, reducing complexity and search costs. But they also target and exploit behavioral biases. Recommender systems lend themselves to regulation through 'budges'.

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When and how behavior change can accelerate system change (and vice versa): Mapping reciprocal processes for climate change mitigation

System change and individual behavior change are often conceptualized as mutually exclusive strategies for climate change mitigation – but what if this duality is misguided? Denise de Ridder and Sander Thomaes map four pathways illustrating that system change is effective when it promotes behavior change and vice versa.

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Beyond Technical Safeguards: Human Behaviour is the Missing Piece in AI Safety

AI safety discussions predominantly focus on easy to conceptualise, highly salient risks including algorithm bias, hallucinations and disinformation. While these are crucial concerns, they overlook a fundamental truth we've learned from other high-stakes fields like aviation and healthcare: sometimes the most dangerous risks can hide in plain sight. Dr Moira Nicolson and Holly Marquez (Government Communications, Cabinet Office, UK Government) introduce a framework for anticipating and managing these risks, supporting a safer rollout of AI use in the public sector and beyond.

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IBPPA Blog: Reflections from the 2025 Singapore Workshop

From keynote visions of ‘Behavioural AI’ to field experiments on job matching and green transport, the 2025 BPP Workshop in Singapore showcased how rigorous behavioural science meets real-world policy. Two days blended cross-disciplinary panels, data-rich case studies and Marina Bay networking, sparking fresh collaborations across sustainability, labour, finance and AI.

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Yes we can! Collective action framing increases support for hard climate policies

What if climate communication could enhance support for unpopular but necessary policies? Valerie Dewaelheyns and colleagues show that collective action framing can increase public acceptance of climate adaptation policies and strengthen citizens' belief in society's collective power to tackle climate change.

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From AC to me: Can social norms encourage personal cooling in Chinese offices?

As global temperatures rise, so does our reliance on air conditioning (AC), which accounts for 7% of global electricity use in 2022. But what if the solution to sustainable cooling is not just about better AC technology to cool the entire space, but about changing our behaviour to cooling ourselves? Maggie Yang explores how social norms can encourage office workers in China to adopt personal cooling strategies, potentially saving energy while maintaining comfort.

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How can academia and government work together better to make evidence-based policy?

Academics and civil servants have an interest in effective collaboration and “knowledge exchange”, including the sharing of ideas, evidence and expertise. However, the two sectors have different ways of operating and different – sometimes competing – goals. If they can understand each other better, then they can get the most out of working together.

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Nudging Tax Compliance in Pakistan: Lessons from a Large-Scale Text Message Experiment

Tax compliance remains a thorny issue for governments worldwide—especially in developing countries where informal economic activity, mistrust in government, and limited enforcement capacity create persistent gaps between potential and actual tax revenues. Can a few carefully worded text messages make a difference?

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Seeing is believing: Information does not impact polluting behaviour, unless you can see it 

Air pollution is a worldwide challenge. Despite the serious environmental and health effects, pollution can go unnoticed until very dangerous levels are reached. Rita Abdel Sater, Mathieu Perona, Elise Huillery and Coralie Chevallier use a novel and safe method to make pollution more visible, and demonstrate that personalised feedback can change household behaviours. The Great Smog of London: when pollution became impossible to ignore…

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From Resistance to Acceptance: Making Climate Policies Work for People

The IPCC suggest that a further 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be achieved with more extensive sustainable behaviour change. Yet, when this change impinges on our daily lives, some initial pushback is inevitable. This article explores how trust, fairness, and transparency create conditions in which people feel confident to embrace lifestyle changes to benefit their own health and the future of the planet.

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The Ethics of Behavioural Public Policy in Practice: A Study on Policy Makers’ Views

Mathieu Prevelato introduces a new study exploring policy makers’ views on the ethics of behavioural public policy, and invites feedback on it.

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Every little hurts: Even small amounts of ‘sludge’ undermine the adoption of environmentally friendly business practices

Policymakers often introduce programs to encourage businesses to adopt environmentally friendly practices. But even minor administrative hurdles - known as "sludge" - can significantly reduce take-up of sustainable practices. Manuel Grieder, Deborah Kistler and Jan Schmitz draw on a field experiment with Swiss firms and offer ways forward.

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