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

In the past decade, behavioural approaches to policy design have spread across jurisdictions and policy areas. While the number of studies on successful behavioural interventions 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 understanding of the biases and unintended effects of policy design. The paper concludes by drawing more general lessons for the design of behavioural instruments.