PhD defence M. (Malte) Dewies

Dissertation in short:

More and more governments use knowledge from behavioural sciences to inform their actions – including Rotterdam. In 2017, the Behavioural Insights Group Rotterdam was created as a collaboration between the municipality of Rotterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam. This group investigated policy issues and developed behavioural solutions using an innovative approach reported in chapter 1. The approach was used to successfully improve debt collection of the municipality (chapter 2), reduce illegal garbage disposals (chapter 4), and explore ways to prevent illegal fireworks in a Rotterdam football stadium (chapter 5). However, when using the approach to increase information security at an office, the tested interventions were ineffective (chapter 3). An evaluation of the group (chapter 6) revealed nine lessons-learned for how the infusion of knowledge from behavioural sciences into government can be improved. As an example, we encourage governments to view the application of behavioural knowledge as a collaborative, flexible, and contextualised effort rather than a rule-based procedure often embraced elsewhere. This way, behavioural solutions can be developed for more diverse policy issues. Different aims and strategies can guide the development of such solutions (chapter 8), for instance the goal to generate new behavioural knowledge or do develop practical solutions. Besides, how policy issues are addressed by governments also depends on the beliefs of government officials about behavioural change (chapter 7). Therefore, improving public policy using behavioural sciences also concerns the views of government officials. Taken together, this dissertation advances the knowledge on applying behavioural knowledge for government and contains hands-on advice.