Behavioural mechanisms and public policy design: Preventing failures in behavioural public policy

Date01 April 2021
DOI10.1177/0952076719827062
Published date01 April 2021
AuthorHolger Strassheim
Subject MatterSpecial Issue Articles
Special Issue: Mechanisms
Behavioural mechanisms
and public policy design:
Preventing failures in
behavioural public policy
Holger Strassheim
Universita
¨t Bielefeld, Germany
Abstract
In the past decade, behavioural approaches to policy design have spread across juris-
dictions and policy areas. While the number of studies on successful behavioural inter-
ventions continuously increases, scholars are reporting unintended side effects and
other forms of policy failures associated with behavioural public policy. The paper
aims at getting a better understanding of the various mechanisms of behavioural
change and their impact on the success or failure of policies. Behavioural public
policy failures seem to be the result of a deficit in understanding the links between
cognitive and social mechanisms on multiple levels. It is being argued that systematically
linking the mechanisms underlying behavioural change will help us to get a better under-
standing of the biases and unintended effects of policy design. The paper concludes by
drawing more general lessons for the design of behavioural instruments.
Keywords
Behavioural public policy, nudging, policy design, policy failure, policy mechanisms
Introduction
Since more than a decade, insights from behavioural economics, psychology,
neuroscience and other behavioural sciences have been integrated in the design
of policies across multiple areas and jurisdictions (Lourenco et al., 2016;
Straßheim and Beck, forthcoming; United Nations, 2017). Especially the pro-
gramme of research known as the ‘heuristics and biases approach’ is inspirational
by showing that many errors in the judgement of citizens or even experts can be
traced back to a specif‌ic set of cognitive mechanisms (Kahneman and Frederick,
2002; Kahneman and Tversky, 1982 [1974]). Under conditions of uncertainty and
Public Policy and Administration
2021, Vol. 36(2) 187–204
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076719827062
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Corresponding author:
Holger Strassheim, Universita
¨t Bielefeld, Postfach 10 01 31, Bielefeld 33501, Germany.
Email: holger.strassheim@uni-bielefeld.de
whenever situations are complex, individuals may use a conceptually, semantically
or logically simpler judgement (a ‘heuristic’) as a substitute for the more complex
assessments. People may answer dif‌f‌icult questions as if they were simple ones. This
basic mechanism of ‘attribute substitution’, of shifting from a complex mode of
deliberation (called ‘system 2’) to a fast and simple mode (called ‘system 1’), may
lead to behavioural biases and failures (Kahneman, 2011; Kahneman and
Frederick, 2002, 2005). This paper discusses the role of mechanisms in public
policies inspired by behavioural sciences and the implications for preventing
policy failures.
There are at least three reasons why these insights on cognitive mechanisms
became so instructive in public policy:
First, behavioural approaches help to explain the failures of those approaches in
policy design that are based on rational mechanisms of action (Datta and
Mullainathan, 2014; Howlett and Mukherjee, 2014). More often than not, pro-
grammes, policies or instruments fail because people act against their own interests
(at least as def‌ined by policy-makers). Incentives are taken up less enthusiastically
than expected; information is ignored; resources are used for the wrong purposes;
habits prevail even when confronted with high risks or immediate danger (Bovens
and t’ Hart, 2016; Dunlop, 2017; Nair and Howlett, 2017). Rational choice explan-
ations treat these phenomena either as the result of unrecognized factors such as
hidden costs or informational asymmetries or simply as residual deviations from
the standard model (Howlett, 2012). In contrast, behavioural economics argue that
people systematically act against their own interests because of heuristics that work
as cognitive shortcuts in situations of complexity. By identifying cognitive mech-
anisms leading to biases, behavioural approaches might help policy designers to
realize that
the assumptions we make - sometimes without realizing - when we design programs do
not match the way people actually make decisions. Our intuitions - and those in eco-
nomic models - overlook many of the important things that make people tick. (Datta
and Mullainathan, 2014: 11)
Second, ‘behavioural design’ (Datta and Mullainathan, 2014) or, more broadly,
‘behavioural public policy’ (John, 2018; Oliver, 2015) is based on the idea of taking
‘attribute substitution’ and other cognitive mechanisms into account when design-
ing public policy tools and institutional environments. To use the terminology of
the mechanistic policy perspective (see the introduction to this Special Issue by
Capano and Howlett), behavioural design develops ‘activators’ that change the
informational environment and trigger mechanisms through which individual or
collective behaviour is altered. For example, ‘nudges’ use visual or text signals in
the ‘choice architecture’ (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) of individuals to activate (or
inhibit) a cognitive mechanism that might support (or undermine) behaviours
increasing individual or collective wellbeing. The possibilities of triggering cogni-
tive mechanisms are manifold and may change the way persons, for example
188 Public Policy and Administration 36(2)

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