Research on behavioural public policy (BPP) has accelerated over the last decade. In this blog post, Swee Kiat Tay and Ching Leong first delve into the metrics behind this trend by analysing over 2000 articles on the theme of BPP published between 1980 to 2024. Second, they argue that behavioural insights can help build legitimacy for a policy and can shape policy ideas, enabling BPP to not only design effective interventions but also to explain and influence institutional and policy change.
There are now more behavioural public policy (BPP) papers written than ever before – more blurring of lines, more empirical experiments, more inventions of new terms, and more interrogation (and scepticism) of said terms.
My colleague Swee Kiat Tay and I (Ching Leong) conducted a bibliometric analysis of 2,301 Scopus-index publications on BPP. Our analysis illustrated the continued emergence and growth of BPP and its role in both describing and explaining how institutions work to organise, constrain, and motivate behaviour in numerous ways.
BPP research is accelerating
First, we found research is accelerating. In the 38 years from 1980 to 2018, there were 891 BPP articles; in just five years from 2019 to July 2024, there were 876. Momentum is picking up not just in research, but in practice (Figure 1).
Herein lies the power of BPP.
Since the inception of the first Behavioural Insights Team in the UK in 2010, the number of similar teams increased to more than 300 across 63 countries by 2023. Another study placed the number at over 600 at last count in 2024.
Figure 1. Publication Trends in BPP related research
Source: Tay and Leong, 2026
Our analysis shows that the share of public policy publications focused on BPP increased from 0.09% in 1980 to 0.67% in 2024 – a 7.5-fold rise – even though the overall proportion remains modest. BPP’s growth is also reflected in the range of journals that now publish BPP-related research (Table 1).
Table 1. Journals with the highest number of BPP articles and corresponding impact factors
| Rank | Journal | Freq. | SJR 2023 |
| 1 | Energy Policy | 123 | 2.388 |
| 2 | Behavioural Public Policy | 92 | 1.532 |
| 3 | Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice | 78 | 2.182 |
| 4 | Transport Policy | 69 | 1.742 |
| 5 | Environmental Science and Policy | 44 | 1.602 |
| 6 | Food Policy | 42 | 2.116 |
| 7 | Journal of Consumer Policy | 40 | 0.642 |
| 8 | Land Use Policy | 39 | 1.847 |
| 9 | Marine Policy | 27 | 1.036 |
| 10 | Public Administration Review | 27 | 3.148 |
Geographically diverse BPP research
Second, the field itself is becoming more geographically diverse. Although most BPP research tends to take place in Western, developed countries (Group 1), the share of research from Asia and developing countries (Group 2), has grown over time (doubling from 16% in 2000 to 32% in 2024). This is encouraging, given longstanding concerns that behavioural research has relied too heavily on “WEIRD” samples: Western, Educated, Industralised, Rich and Democratic societies.
This finding is well-aligned with what some scholars call the “heterogeneity revolution”, where the recognition of heterogeneity better informs our understanding of theories and causal mechanisms, and provides more dependable guidance to policymakers.
BPP research explores today’s policy issues
Our third finding is that BPP research is engaging more deeply with policy issues of day. Earlier work focused on climate change, energy and transport policy, while more recent studies have turned to the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside growing interest in psychological micro-mechanisms and experimental design. This primarily reflects BPP’s consequentialist ambition, embodied in the promise of ‘nudges’ as low-cost, autonomy-preserving interventions capable of delivering effective policy outcomes.
Our analysis also surfaces a growing realisation of BPP’s limits. Empirical findings have shown that lessons are not always transferable across contexts, and even more importantly, the effects of behavioural interventions may be small, short-lived, and sometimes, hard to measure due to spillovers.
We overestimate the utilitarian promise of BPP at our peril.
BPP can build legitimacy for a policy
There is, however a second, less-appreciated role of BPP – not as a consequentialist means of bringing about a specific policy goal – but a way of building legitimacy for a policy (i.e., to negotiate and agree on the “rules of the game”).
Human thoughts and actions, rather than being influenced in a consistent manner, can be expected to vary inconsistently, with justifications being made up “on the fly” depending on the specific circumstances and conditions. Understanding bias, heuristics and other behavioural elements are therefore crucial in the negotiation and legitimisation of policy design within specific contexts. BPP therefore underlines an explicitly contractarian framework for public policy, with each contract written locally and contextually.
However, even as we argue for contextual heterogeneity, we recognise that doing so without any organising mechanism leads to a real risk of BPP turning into an a-theoretical policy lab, where the intervention effects are so varied and diverse that literature is limited in its ability to inform future policy research, or policy designs of policy makers.
We propose that an organising mechanism can be found if institutional theory can accommodate a behavioural element. Benjamin Ewert and colleagues, for example, have attempted a behavioural model of the policy process which illustrates the complex interactions between individual attitudes and behaviour, and the broader political, moral, and contextual environment.
We argue that a behavioural theory of institutional change can be developed by integrating institutional theories with theories of the policy process.
Policy process
First, we note that BPP findings form part of decision making in the policy process, within Lasswell’s “intelligence function”. Lasswell defines the function as “the acquisition of information and planning in exercise of all five of the intellectual tasks required of decision makers.” These tasks are gathering, evaluation and dissemination of information relevant to decision-making, prediction based on such information, and planning for future contingencies.
This function has traditionally been under–studied but has seen a recent revival due to its fit into contemporary theories of policy sciences. We argue that it can be reimagined and placed more centrally within policy research. This function is part of Lasswell’s broader work, known as the decision process within the policy sciences.
The comprehensive framework comprises seven functional categories which form a way to characterise and understand the policy-making process – intelligence, promotion, prescription, invocation, application, appraisal, and termination. Viewed sequentially, the functions describe the process of policy making. However, it can also be viewed functionally, cutting across all stages of policy making. In the “intelligence” stage, various types of information and knowledge are collected, evaluated, and filtered into the decision-making process. In Lasswell’s formulation, the social process takes up a large part of its analysis. This social process is rife with behavioural variables – participants (institutions or individuals involved in intelligence function), perspectives (identities of participants and their demands), as well as their values. Lasswell and colleagues defined participants in the policy process as “intelligence producers” and “intelligence consumers.”
Institutional theory
How does this find its way into institutional change? A second useful development lies in the field of institutional theory, specifically, discursive institutionalism. This provides an explanation of how institutions change by the force of ideas.
Discursive institutionalism is a “collective term” for approaches that take ideas and discourse seriously by focusing on the substantive content of ideas and/or the interactive processes through which ideas are generated and communicated, building on the “ideational turn in policy”. Discursive institutionalism is seen as an advancement because it explains institutional change “from the inside” via actors’ discursive interactions – accounting for cognitive/normative ideas and internal motivations. The theory can explain change through ideational shifts and collective agreement rather than relying on exogenous shocks.
Summary
In short, behavioural interventions and outcomes can be treated as forms of policy ideas, which influence how institutions change, even as institutions themselves shape and constrain behaviour by showing what is “legitimate” and what is not. By drawing on Lasswell’s intelligence function and discursive institutionalism, we offer a useful way to integrate behavioural public policy’s empirical richness with theories of institutional change.
In conclusion, we argue the “power” of BPP lies not just in its ability to design interventions that influence publics to behave in accordance with a policy goal, but in its ability to understand, explain and garner public support for (or against) a specific policy. We risk significant perils if support for BPP is based only on its first role. For BPP also has a second, theoretical power, allowing us to relate institutional theory to the policy sciences and, in doing so, illuminate the role of ideas in the policy process.
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Ching Leong is Professor and Vice Provost at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Her research is focused on environmental behaviours particularly around water use, water institutions and governance in Asia.
Swee Kiat Tay is Senior Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore