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What Is Really Behavioral in Behavioral Health Policy? And Does It Work?
Author(s) -
Galizzi Matteo M.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
applied economic perspectives and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.4
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 2040-5804
pISSN - 2040-5790
DOI - 10.1093/aepp/ppt036
Subject(s) - nudge theory , behavioral economics , psychological intervention , incentive , choice architecture , public economics , context (archaeology) , health policy , work (physics) , economics , psychology , applied psychology , public relations , health care , political science , social psychology , microeconomics , engineering , economic growth , psychiatry , mechanical engineering , paleontology , biology
Across health systems, there is increasing interest in applying behavioral economics insights to health policy challenges. Policy decision makers have recently discussed a range of diverse health policy interventions that are commonly brought together under a behavioral umbrella. These include randomized controlled trials, comparison portals, information labels, financial incentives, sin taxes, and nudges. A taxonomy is proposed to classify such behavioral interventions. In the context of risky health behavior, each cluster of policies is then scrutinized under two respects: (i) What are its genuinely behavioral insights? (ii) What evidence exists on its practical effectiveness? The discussion highlights the main challenges in drawing a clear mapping between how much each policy is behaviorally inspired and its effectiveness.