Exploring the Mechanisms of Public Policy-making to Change Citizens’ Behavior

Document Type : Review Article

Authors

1 PhD Public Policy Making, Faculty of School of Progress Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran

2 Assistant Professor of Futures studies, Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, College of Farabi, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Policy-making with the aim of changing the behavior of citizens is carried out by governments in various economic, social, environmental, etc. fields. These policies are in the three areas of creating order and social security (such as preventing crime, improving traffic behavior, preserving the environment, etc.), creating beneficial behaviors (such as education, parenting behaviors, etc.) and improving The individual and social lifestyle of the citizens of the society (such as quitting addiction, maintaining personal health, improving eating habits, etc.) have been revealed in many interventions of the government of new governments. Also, special attention to the behavioral dimensions of all policies has been demanded by some political systems in the world. Based on this, the main goal of this research is to analyze the executive mechanisms of public policy with a behavioral approach. Systematic literature review and theme analysis were used. A total of 376 researches/articles were screened during 4 stages and at the end, 191 researches remained. These articles were extracted from 6 valid international databases. In response to the research question, 134 meaningful propositions, 181 initial codes, 57 final codes and 16 themes were identified as behavioral policy components: 1) social marketing, 2) providing information, 3) social norms, 4) incentives, 5) use of emotions and feelings, 6) combination of behavioral and non-behavioral mechanisms, 7) formulation of rules and regulations, 8) creation of attitude-preference-behavior chain, 9) framework/patterning, 10) highlighting, 11) default , 12) simplification, 13) networking, 14) environment design, 15) scheduled notifications, and 16) commitments.

Keywords


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