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Title: Applying behavioral science to agriculture, food, and agri-environmental policymaking
This special issue aims to extend the active discourse on applying behavioral science-based tools to policymaking in the fields of food, agriculture, and agri-environmental issues. Papers in this special issue evaluate the impact of behavioral science-based tools to understand their effectiveness and limitations. Additionally, for this introductory paper, we collected and analyzed data from the 91 submissions we received for this special issue to identify knowledge gaps and priorities for future policy research. Our findings show that behavioral interventions have small effect sizes but, when coupled with other policy tools, can have larger effects. We highlight that future research in these areas must aim to overcome the current shortcomings of the literature in terms of the use of hypothetical or low stakes in experiments, the focus on only measuring short-term behavior change, and the general lack of discussion on cost-effectiveness and mechanisms. Furthermore, we found that most behavioral science interventions in these submitted papers focused either on consumers or producers and thus offered little insight into other actors in the supply chain. We argue that a focus on better research practices is needed to improve policy-oriented behavioral science-based research in the future and note that accepted papers in this special issue were more likely to employ these practices. Finally, we offer six insights and recommendations for researchers and practitioners that arise from this special issue  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1757353
PAR ID:
10513847
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
NA
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Food Policy
Volume:
120
Issue:
C
ISSN:
0306-9192
Page Range / eLocation ID:
102548
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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