Using Behavioural Science in International Development
10 November 2017
The ideas of behavioural science, first popularised in the book ‘Nudge’, are making an impact on development programmes. In 2010, the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) was set-up within the UK government, using empirical approaches to test new policies with the aim of delivering efficient and effective public services. In 2014, the BIT team spun out as a ‘profit with purpose’ company, growing the team and expanding its work worldwide.
‘Interventions need to take into account the specific psychological and social influences that guide decision making and behavior in a particular setting. That means that the process of designing and implementing effective interventions needs to become a more iterative process of discovery, learning, and adaptation.’
At 11 % of GDP, Guatemala has one of the lowest proportions of tax revenue anywhere in the world. BIT used a randomised controlled trial to test different messages in letters to improve tax payments. The best performing letters used a message that highlighted the 64.5% taxpayers who had already paid their taxes or framed non-declaration of tax as an intentional choice. These letters were highly successful, with the best performing letters quadrupling the tax received per letter sent. Since then, the BIT has worked with a number of low- and middle-income countries. For example, BIT are currently trialing interventions to tackle teacher absenteeism in Peru and to encourage the poorest pregnant women to participate in pre-natal healthcare in Mexico.
Alongside its projects, BIT has been an inspiration for similar units worldwide, with the team working directly with Australia, Singapore, and the World Bank Group. These are enabling BIT and others to understand whether similar behavioural approaches are effective in different cultural and political contexts.
Impact
BIT have used their work and the academic literature to develop frameworks, such as EAST (Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely), and TEST (Target specific behaviour, Explore context, Solutions based on evidence, and Trial) to help others apply behavioural insights. The BIT Chief Executive also helped launch the World Development Report 2015 demonstrating how BIT insights can be applied to development policy and they’ve published over 15 academic papers in the last four years.
Learning
Freedom to innovate BIT has frequently found fewer barriers to testing and trying out ideas within development projects than in the UK:
“Global Development is ahead of domestic policy in empirical evaluations – there is more of a history of randomised controlled trials in development and you need that level of rigour to understand what is happening. Some interventions are subtle, so you need to think of impact.”
Using collaborative approaches BIT use a collaborative model, working with skilled in-country staff and partners and ensuring that they understand the behaviour in detail and in context. It can take months to find skilled officials, resulting in the team sometimes declining projects with high start-up costs. Partnering with organisations such as the World Bank and the Department for International Development (DFID) enables them to have economists or tax officials on the ground to work with.
Building the right expertise Initially, the team did not have extensive development expertise, however, they had a staff member who saw the potential for impact and had an interest in global development. Rather than turning down requests they recruited staff with backgrounds in development economics and related subjects enabling them to turn the demand for their skills into an opportunity.
Further links
Read more about the Behavioural Insights Team’s work here
With the recent cuts in ODA funding for international development research, it is now more important than ever to understand barriers to equitable partnerships and use the lessons learned over the past few years to move from principles to practice.
With a focus on UK - Africa partnerships, the event will be an opportunity to listen and share perspectives and experiences on:
The role of research and innovation in international development
Global partnerships from an African and UK universities perspective
How research partnerships have evolved over the past five years
How research partnerships are perceived and how we can we approach them in a mutually respectful way
How we define impact and how is it embedded in research
This report provides a snapshot of international development research undertaken by UK HEIs in the REF2021 period (2013-2020). Based on the REF2021 definition of non-academic impact, it gives an overview of the types of impact research has in LMICs and globally and how this differs across disciplines and topics.
