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Behavioural insights can help policy makers obtain a deeper understanding of the behavioural mechanisms contributing to environmental problems, and design and implement more effective policy interventions. This report reviews recent developments in the application of behavioural insights to encourage more sustainable consumption, investment and compliance decisions by individuals and firms.
Drawing on interventions initiated by ministries and agencies responsible for environment and energy, as well as cross-government behavioural insights teams, it portrays how behavioural sciences have been integrated into the policy-making process. The report covers a variety of policy areas: energy, water and food consumption, transport and car choice, waste management and resource efficiency, compliance with environmental regulation and participation in voluntary schemes. It shows what has proven to work – and what has not – in policy practice in OECD countries and beyond.
 

This chapter analyses behavioural interventions implemented to induce consumers to make more sustainable transport and car choices. The behavioural biases at play are highlighted, together with the behavioural levers used by policy makers to tackle them. Behavioural interventions in this area have focused on framing information on cars’ fuel efficiency, emissions and running costs in a clear and salient way.

This chapter analyses the behavioural interventions that have been implemented in the realm of energy policy, highlighting the behavioural biases they tackle and the behavioural levers they build upon. Behavioural interventions in this area have aimed at reducing energy consumption (e.g. providing feedback to consumers), increasing investment in energy efficiency (e.g. framing in a clear and salient way information related to energy efficiency), and encouraging the use of energy from renewable sources (e.g. leveraging green defaults).

This chapter provides a snapshot of the governance approaches that different governments have adopted in leveraging behavioural insights to tackle environmental problems. It maps out the policy areas where behavioural interventions have been developed, and specifies the behavioural levers that policy makers have used to design them. Finally, it outlines the most common methodologies applied in assessing the impacts of behavioural interventions.

This chapter presents behavioural interventions rolled-out to encourage more sustainable food consumption. The behavioural biases at play are highlighted, together with the behavioural levers used by policy makers to tackle them. Interventions in this area have focused on two main issues: informing consumers about the environmental footprint of their food choices, and limiting food waste through persuasive messages.

Policy needs to be developed on the basis of realistic representations of the mechanisms driving individual and collective decision-making. Insights from the behavioural sciences, such as behavioural economics, psychology and neuroscience can help policy makers obtain a deeper understanding of the behavioural mechanisms that contribute to environmental problems, and design and implement more effective policy interventions. Behavioural insights (BIs) are a complementary tool to traditional policy instruments, such as pricing and regulation.

This chapter presents behavioural interventions implemented to improve waste management and resource efficiency policies. Relevant behavioural biases are highlighted, together with the behavioural levers used by policy makers to tackle them. On the one hand, there have been interventions trying to ensure sound waste management, e.g. preventing littering. On the other hand, a number of interventions promote the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), e.g. by inducing the purchase of long-living products and encouraging product repair as opposed to replacement.

This chapter presents the behavioural interventions that have been rolled-out in order to encourage water conservation, highlighting the behavioural biases they tackle. Behavioural interventions in this area have built upon a range of behavioural levers, from reward and punishment schemes, to feedback mechanisms to salient reminders.

This chapter presents behavioural interventions implemented to increase compliance with environmental regulation and participation in voluntary schemes, both on the side of individuals and firms. The behavioural biases at play are highlighted, together with the behavioural levers used by policy makers to tackle them. Behavioural interventions have been rolled out both to increase firm compliance with reporting requirements, such as those on the import of environmentally harmful substances, to promote individual compliance with the payment of environmentally related fines, such as those on littering, and to make the uptake of “soft” policy instruments such as voluntary certification more appealing.

Tackling environmental problems requires changing the behaviour of individuals, households, firms and governmental organisations. Policy can build on a diverse array of powerful instruments to green behaviour. Next to instruments traditionally used for this purpose, such as regulation, taxes, and tradable permits, behavioural insights are increasingly recognised as an important component of policy makers’ toolbox to tackle environmental problems. Behavioural insights denote knowledge acquired from behavioural sciences, including behavioural economics, psychology and neuroscience. These insights can help policy makers obtain a deeper understanding of the behavioural mechanisms that contribute to environmental problems, and eventually design and implement more effective policy interventions.

Behavioural biases can affect the outcomes of policies aiming to tackle environmental problems. This chapter provides examples of such behavioural biases and explains how behavioural insights can inform policy making in this realm. It provides a typology of behavioural levers that can act as complements for traditional environmental policy tools. It then synthesises the main lessons learnt from behavioural interventions implemented by governments in a range of policy areas: energy, water and food consumption, transport and car choice, waste management and resource efficiency, compliance with environmental regulation and participation in voluntary schemes. It concludes with an overview of the cross-cutting issues in the application of behavioural insights to environmentally relevant policy, and proposes directions for future applications.