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Informing behavioural policies with data from everyday life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2018

LEONHARD K. LADES Open the ORCID record for LEONHARD K. LADES [Opens in a new window] ,
LUCIE MARTIN  and
LIAM DELANEY
LEONHARD K. LADES*
Affiliation:
EnvEcon, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland and University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
LUCIE MARTIN
Affiliation:
Behavioural Insights Team, London, UK
LIAM DELANEY
Affiliation:
University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland and Stirling Management School, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
*
*Correspondence to: EnvEcon, 11 Priory Office Park, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Email: leonhard.lades@ucd.ie
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Abstract

Naturalistic monitoring tools provide detailed information about people's behaviours and experiences in everyday life. Most naturalistic monitoring research has focused on measuring subjective well-being. This paper discusses how naturalistic monitoring can inform behavioural public policy-making by providing detailed information about everyday decisions and the choice architecture in which these decisions are made. We describe how the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) – a naturalistic monitoring tool popular in the subjective well-being literature – can be used to: (i) improve ecological validity of behavioural economics; (ii) provide mechanistic evidence of the everyday workings of behavioural interventions; and (iii) help us to better understand people's true preferences. We believe that DRM data on everyday life have great potential to support the design and evaluation of behavioural policies.

Type
Article
Information
Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 172 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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