Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy : Steering for Health

Many modern policy challenges are linked directly to unhealthy living and struggling health systems. This book is for anyone interested in the use of the latest behavioural insights within this crucial policy arena, to incentivise change. It will appeal to practitioners, academics, or students across a wide range of disciplines.

Behavioural economics has become a popular way of tackling a broad range of issues in public policy. By presenting a more descriptive and possibly accurate representation of human behaviour than traditional economics, Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy tries to make sense of decisions that follow a wider conception of welfare, influenced by social norms and narratives, pro-social motivations and choice architectures which were generally neglected by standard economics. The authors show how this model can be applied to tackle a wide range of issues in public health, including smoking, the obesity crisis, exercise uptake, alcoholism, preventive screenings and attitudes towards vaccinations. It shows not only how behavioural economics allows us to better understand such challenges, but also how it can design effective incentives for addressing them. This book is an extensive reassessment of the interaction between behavioural incentives and health.