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behavioral economics

The Pioneer Effect: A Bold New Effect Where No Effect Has Been Before

In the quest for originality, behavioural scientists often create new effects and frameworks—even when existing ones suffice. Dubbed the 'Pioneer Effect' phenomenon (with a tongue firmly in cheek) highlights the challenges of overlapping constructs, fragmented research, and duplicated effort. This article explores why psychology’s proliferation of terms isn’t just confusing—it could be holding the discipline back, and what we can do to course-correct.

By |2025-05-29T08:28:06+00:00May 28th, 2025|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: , , , , |
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Different Dinners: Unlocking Behavioural Insights for a Sustainable Food Future

In 2022, Auckland Council undertook an innovative research project utilising behavioural insights, which was designed to support Auckland households to make more sustainable and climate friendly food choices, i.e., to eat less meat. This ‘Different Dinners’ project is part of a broader programme of work looking at how Auckland Council can respond to its commitments to address climate change. The results were positive and demonstrate that Aucklanders are both willing to and did make changes to their diets. All interventions tested resulted in increased climate-friendly food choices.

By |2024-08-20T01:13:08+00:00April 2nd, 2024|Categories: Environment, Energy & Transportation|Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Are Our Own Behavioral Biases Biasing Us Against Behavioral Science?

There have been a lot of juicy headlines in behavioral science around replicability and the falsification of data. I can’t help but wonder whether these spotlights are distracting (read: biasing) us from the potential and existing contributions of the field as a whole. Perceptions of behavioral science are just as vulnerable to our perceptions and biases. Is it possible that the field is suffering from the effects of its own contributions? 

By |2023-12-21T09:58:46+00:00October 7th, 2023|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Research Methods|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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Make or Break: The Behavioral Science of Innovation

Successful innovation requires far more than a market gap, a visionary, funding, and new technology. Innovation is a behavioral process from start to finish. It relies on the decision-making processes and behaviors of both producers and consumers, as well as the surrounding support system. Behavioral science, the science of how we make decisions, has invaluable practical insights for innovation on all fronts.

By |2022-12-06T01:37:52+00:00December 5th, 2022|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Business & Management, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , , , , , |
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A Practitioner’s Guide to Leveraging Behavioral Insights

Many behavioral interventions offer win-wins to firms, governments, and other stakeholders. However, research has shown that experts do a poor job predicting the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. This article aims to help calibrate forecasts of an intervention's effectiveness. I outline six steps to help assess whether a published effect is likely to be useful in practice.

By |2022-10-27T03:05:05+00:00October 25th, 2022|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Business & Management, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , |
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The Psychology of Debt Collection

More and more people struggle with debt, and while people differ in their motivations, preferences, and their reasons not to pay, debt collection practices rarely take these factors into account. Using psychological insights, debt collection can be made more debtor-friendly and effective. The results: increased repayments for companies and a lower financial burden for consumers.

By |2022-10-11T01:40:44+00:00October 10th, 2022|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Finance & Investing, Marketing & Consumer Behavior|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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Transparency: A Tool to Build Election Trust

Trust in government and election confidence rates have continued to decline in the US. Research indicates that employing operational transparency could be a potential solution. Using these insights, we tested how transparency prompts impact trust in the mail-in voting election process. Higher-level transparency regarding the mail-in voting process was most effective and can be easily scaled by election administration to build trust in these processes.

By |2022-05-24T16:04:54+00:00May 17th, 2022|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Government & Civic Behavior|Tags: , , , , , |
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Combining Behavioural Science and Māori Cultural Values to Improve the Criminal Justice System

In behavioural science, context is everything. Behavioural Science Aotearoa (BSA) works across the justice sector in New Zealand, where indigenous Māori people make up almost 17% of the population. We combined behavioural science with Māori cultural principles to encourage people to clear their Warrants to Arrest by voluntarily appearing at court. Working with New Zealand Police, we designed and tested a phone-based initiative and found promising evidence for its success.

By |2022-05-26T06:56:24+00:00April 18th, 2022|Categories: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Government & Civic Behavior, Morality & Prosocial Behavior|Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Sports in the Service of Economics

An increasing number of academic studies have used sports data to investigate economic behavior. Sports data are not only readily available, they also provide an excellent laboratory to study human behavior in real competitive environments. In this article, I will present several examples of my own work that have used sports data to explain fundamental economic theories, as well as articles that showed divergences of economic decision making from neo-classical theories.

By |2022-02-17T05:38:38+00:00September 8th, 2020|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Society & Everyday Life|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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Rationality, Disclosure, and the “Privacy Paradox”

Many of us say we care about our privacy, but often disclose personal information. This asymmetry is called the “privacy paradox”. This phenomenon is only a paradox, however, if we assume people are rational or engage in rational disclosure decision-making. Taking into account our cognitive biases and the way online platforms are designed, it comes as no surprise that our disclosure behavior doesn’t always match our privacy preferences.

By |2022-02-17T06:13:24+00:00October 8th, 2019|Categories: Behavioral Theory & Insights, Marketing & Consumer Behavior, Technology & Digital|Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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