Case Studies
Kuwait
A dedicated BI unit within the Kuwaiti government
UNDP Kuwait supported the establishment of the Kuwait Policy Appraisal Lab (KPAL), a BI unit within the Kuwait government. Among KPAL's UNDP-supported experiments, an intervention in cinemas found a statistically significant increase in the proper disposal of waste by cinema goers, thanks to a video message and stickers placed on the back of cinema seats. Another experiment, which involved placing basketball hoops and stickers on recycling bins on a university campus, led to an increase in recycling rates.
Uruguay
Behaviors and perceptions of the Uruguayan population regarding COVID-19
With the understanding that greater awareness could favor behavioral changes that help contain the spread of the pandemic, the Accelerator Lab of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Uruguay carried out two experiments to test the following hypothesis: the use of media and specific messages aimed at different population groups contributes to raising awareness about individual and collective responsibility to control the spread of the Coronavirus. The first experiment disseminated two audiovisual campaigns that gained popularity globally (one emphasising “staying at home” and “being a hero”, the other focusing on the negative impact of participating in parties. In the second experiment, a letter was sent by post, between December 30th and 31st, along with a face mask. The mailing addresses in Montevideo were selected randomly. The letter, called “Your future self”, used positive messaging appealing to people's actions during the new year celebrations. Follow-up calls were made between January 5 and 6, 2021, to the treatment and control households to ask a series of questions. Both experiments evidenced the need for messaging to not just be clear, but timely and relevant.
North Macedonia
Behaviour Change Communications Strategy and Campaign on Energy Efficiency and Renewables
A scoping study was carried out in North Macedonia to understand motivational factors that shape household investment or spending behaviour in adopting energy-efficient and renewable energy solutions among seven target groups (women-headed households, single parents, Roma, households with one or more persons with disabilities, individuals affected by Covid-19, returnees, and recipients of remittances). The study found that households faced several barriers to investing in energy efficiency, and that these manifested differently for each target group. Barriers included lack of awareness of the harmful effects of smoke inhalation, a perception that renewable energy sources are unaffordable, lack of trust in national/municipal government and in banks, and a precarious financial climate (due to the impacts of Covid-19, existing home loans, etc.) Based on these findings, a behaviour change communications campaign has been designed to encourage each target group to apply for incentive-based payments for the purchase of energy efficient and renewable solutions. The campaign will be implemented starting 2023 through local banks.
Sudan, Yemen
Behavioural Insights for Preventing Violent Extremism
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of behavioural insights to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalization and violent extremism – specifically to improve attendance in psychosocial support meetings and the effectiveness of education programs targeting prison populations. The pilots used BI tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices. The application of BI in the context of violent extremism has since expanded to Central and Southern Asia with UNDP Country Offices in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan currently conducting research in partnership with the EU and sister agencies UNICEF, IOM, and UNOCT.
Dijibouti
Behavioural Insights for Youth Entrepreneurship
Behavioural science can strengthen entrepreneurship development efforts by evidencing how enablers and barriers in the entrepreneurship system shape decision-making and therefore behavioural outcomes. In 2020-22, UNDP's Regional Innovation Team in the Arab States and 10 Country Offices in the region set out to explore these enablers and barriers and to experiment with behavioural solutions. UNDP Djibouti focused on increasing the number of women entrepreneurs opening microfinance accounts, which are considerably easier and cheaper to set up than accounts with commercial banks.
Iraq
Behavioural Insights for Youth Entrepreneurship
Behavioural science can strengthen entrepreneurship development efforts by evidencing how enablers and barriers in the entrepreneurship system shape decision-making and therefore behavioural outcomes. In 2020-22, UNDP's Regional Innovation Team in the Arab States and 10 Country Offices in the region set out to explore these enablers and barriers and to experiment with behavioural solutions. UNDP Iraq focused on improving the take-up of human-centred design tools in business incubation programmes.
Jordan
Behavioural Insights for Youth Entrepreneurship
Behavioural science can strengthen entrepreneurship development efforts by evidencing how enablers and barriers in the entrepreneurship system shape decision-making and therefore behavioural outcomes. In 2020-22, UNDP's Regional Innovation Team in the Arab States and 10 Country Offices in the region set out to explore these enablers and barriers and to experiment with behavioural solutions. UNDP Jordan focused on exploring the incentives and costs linked to business registration processes.
Uganda
Rich Baby, Healthy Family - Using BeSci to encourage saving for antenatal care
Rich Baby, Healthy Family uses both a smart phone-based app and a physical device in the form of a coin to promote saving.
Users will be enrolled on the Rich Baby, Healthy Family scheme when they visit a registered health facility for antenatal care or they can register through the Mobile Money platform. As users add money to their account they can watch their savings “grow” through an animation in the form of a pregnant woman’s belly. For users that do not own a smartphone, they will make a mark on their coin punch card to track their progress each time they make a deposit to their mobile money savings account.
The users will also receive regular reminders to save so that they can reach their goal. Once the goal is reached, money will be transferred from their savings account to the health facility to cover the costs of receiving maternal healthcare.
Sudan
Binge Consumption & Public Health
For crisis response measures to be effective, they need to be mirrored in public behaviour. The Accelerator Lab in Sudan is looking to understand – and nudge – consumer behaviour and the systematic implications of binge consumption on public health, economy and society. While particularly salient in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, with hand sanitiser flying off the shelves and price increases of 280% on masks, this work is part of a bigger effort to identify and test multiple entry points for supporting responsive governance in Sudan.
In addition to social media analysis, opinion polls, and more, the Sudan Accelerator Lab is preparing to dispatch an SMS survey to a diverse sample of 635,000 people, including nomads, migrants, homemakers, rural populations, the elderly as well as youth. The leads emerging from the responses (estimated at 2%, or 12,700) will inform the Lab’s behavioural interventions, including targeted messaging to discourage panic-buying.
Uruguay
Testing Behaviours & Perceptions regarding COVID-19
With the understanding that greater awareness could favor behavioral changes that help contain the spread of the pandemic, UNDP's Accelerator Lab in Uruguay carried out two experiments to validate the following hypothesis: the use of media and specific messages aimed at different population groups contributes to raising awareness about individual and collective responsibility to control the spread of the Coronavirus.
On the one hand, in the first experiment (N = 171 people), two audiovisual campaigns that gained popularity globally were analyzed, sending different videos to different groups, one of German origin (emphasis on “stay at home” and “be a hero”), and another Spanish origin (emphasis "do not participate in parties," the negative impact of doing so). The main conclusions obtained were:
• Regardless of having seen any of the videos, the population is considerably aware of the virus's contagiousness since 95% of people believe that they could be infected with COVID-19.
• However, 79% consider that preventive health measures are easy to comply with, and 88% that their actions can influence other people's health.
• Among those who consider that prevention measures are difficult to comply with (21%), the perception of having been exposed to situations with a risk of contagion increases.
• The Spanish video caused greater changes in the perception of COVID than the German video. This could be due to the timelessness of "stay at home."
On the other hand, in the second experiment (N = 200), a letter was sent through the Uruguayan National Mail service, between December 30th and 31st, along with a face mask. The homes' addresses in Montevideo were taken randomly.
The letter called “Your future self” sought to appeal to a positive message regarding how people can act, particularly in celebrating the end of the year and the new year. Then, calls were made between January 5 and 6, 2021, to the households to ask a series of questions, both to the people to whom the letters were sent and the control group.
The main findings identified in this experiment were:
• The letter was well-valued by the population, particularly by adults over 65 years old. 44% of those who received it indicated that the letter contributed a lot to them. This assessment increases in those over 65 years old.
• Adults over 65 who received the letter responded more moderately to how difficult it has been to comply with the recommended measures at the end of the New Year’s Eve. On the contrary, in the control and untreated group, the vast majority answered: “very easy.”
• Older adults who receive the letter declare to a greater extent having reduced the number of people with whom they celebrated the New Year’s Eve compared to the previous year (67% treated group, 53% control group)
• 90% of the treated group and 85% of the control group do not consider that situations of possible contagions were generated in their year-end celebration. The letter does not seem to affect the response. Still, it is highlighted that the perception of the risk of contagion could be more present in the population outside their homes and not so much in their intra-family activities.
• The delivery of face masks can be valued positively and contribute to the prevention of infections, at least in the population approached by this experiment, where the majority (62%) used it less than a week after receiving it.
It is important to note that various comments on the letter's impact have also been received in the process, and they are not included in this quantitative analysis. For example, people stated that they kept the letter, shared it with their family, or even left it next to the Christmas tree. These emotional factors are not negligible in a context where people must maintain certain behaviors that require effort.
In this proof of concept that comprised both experiments, the relevance of contacting people when they are most likely to be receptive is concluded, with messages tailored to the circumstances, acting quickly. The temporality of the messages is key: it is not enough for the message to be clear. It must also be transmitted at the right time.
In both experiments, it is possible to identify that the population tends to declare that it is relatively easy or very easy to comply with the recommended health prevention measures.
This process was carried out in its entirety in one month and creates an opportunity to continue working in partnership with academics, organizations, and civil society to overcome the health emergency to achieve sustainable development goals.
Sudan
Disrupting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism with BeSci
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of BeSci to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalisation and violent extremism.
Sudan focused on increasing the effectiveness of education programmes targeting prison populations and Yemen on increasing attendance in psychosocial support meetings. The pilots used BeSci tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices.
The application of BeSci in this area has since expanded to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Practical tools and lessons learned from these experiences have been compiled in a knowledge product.
Yemen
Disrupting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism with BeSci
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of BeSci to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalisation and violent extremism.
Sudan focused on increasing the effectiveness of education programmes targeting prison populations and Yemen on increasing attendance in psychosocial support meetings. The pilots used BeSci tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices.
The application of BeSci in this area has since expanded to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Practical tools and lessons learned from these experiences have been compiled in a knowledge product.
Tajikistan
Disrupting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism with BeSci
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of BeSci to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalisation and violent extremism.
Sudan focused on increasing the effectiveness of education programmes targeting prison populations and Yemen on increasing attendance in psychosocial support meetings. The pilots used BeSci tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices.
The application of BeSci in this area has since expanded to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Practical tools and lessons learned from these experiences have been compiled in a knowledge product.
Pakistan
Disrupting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism with BeSci
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of BeSci to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalisation and violent extremism.
Sudan focused on increasing the effectiveness of education programmes targeting prison populations and Yemen on increasing attendance in psychosocial support meetings. The pilots used BeSci tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices.
The application of BeSci in this area has since expanded to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Practical tools and lessons learned from these experiences have been compiled in a knowledge product.
Uzbekistan
Disrupting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism with BeSci
UNDP Country Offices in Sudan and Yemen piloted the use of BeSci to increase the effectiveness of interventions designed to disrupt the process of radicalisation and violent extremism.
Sudan focused on increasing the effectiveness of education programmes targeting prison populations and Yemen on increasing attendance in psychosocial support meetings. The pilots used BeSci tools, including values affirmation and commitment devices.
The application of BeSci in this area has since expanded to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Practical tools and lessons learned from these experiences have been compiled in a knowledge product.
Armenia
Increasing Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening with BeSci
An RCT in Armenia, implemented by UNDP's SDG Innovation Lab, tested the impact of low-cost interventions of letters and reminders on the uptake of a national cervical cancer screening programme.
Overall, 20,800 letters and 13,000 reminders were sent to a population of 36,508 women. The letters increased participation in the programme by about 350 percent compared to the control group. Letters were especially effective when reinforced by reminders, increasing participation by about 460 percent compared to the control group that received no letters.
Pakistan
COVID-19 Informational Ringtone
An intervention in Pakistan replaced the mobile phone dial tone you hear when calling someone with a recorded behaviourally-informed health message on COVID-19, which appealed among other factors to people’s sense of responsibility towards their loved ones.
Over 113 million people heard the message, making it the most effective communication medium adopted by the Government. Coronavirus Attitude Tracker Surveys indicate that the messages positively impacted knowledge, perceptions and most important behaviours related to COVID – for instance, people reported being 43 percent more likely to wear masks.
Ecuador
Improving Recycling with BeSci
In Ecuador, UNDP worked on BeSci experiments on waste management with a local recycling initiative.
The ReciApp was used to connect citizens to their local waste picker to facilitate direct delivery of recyclable materials, without intermediaries. Personalised messages were sent to app users to test the effect of different cognitive biases such as loss aversion, social pressure, and environmental vs. social incentives to recycle.
The tests achieved a 700 percent increase in the number of reported material delivered to waste pickers.