BWA News/Blog
Our news, plus a few thought pieces and observations from the world of behaviour change.

Student hackathon to boost inclusion within councils
November 20, 2020With the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre and the Wyndham City Council, our PhD candidates conducted a Hackathon on how to design solutions to in...

SCRUB Round 10: Insights into Australians spending behaviour, mental health and access to services
November 18, 2020In the 10th round of data collection, our Survey of COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB) project probed the financial experiences of Aus...

Behaviour change 101 series: How to do a Practice Review
October 29, 2020Practice Reviews seek to capture and collate insights from those who have direct experience in or of the problem under investigation. Their insights c...

SCRUB findings Round 9: Australians’ compliance and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccine
October 13, 2020Almost 90% of Australians believe that they can follow COVID-19 related rules and regulations for as long, or longer, than is currently requested by a...

When news media and social media meet
September 26, 2020A third of the worlds’ food is wasted each year. BWA researcher Mark Boulet recently published a paper tackling food waste in households.

SCRUB COVID-19 findings Round 8: Australians are still complying but testing remains a challenge
September 23, 2020The latest results from the Survey of COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB) project reveal that more than a third of Australians with col...

Spaghetti Soup – the messy problem of food waste
September 18, 2020A third of the world's food is wasted each year. BWA researcher Mark Boulet recently published a paper tackling food waste in households.

SCRUB COVID-19 Survey Wave 7: How the health and compliance of Australians is changing over time
September 2, 2020Coronavirus outbreaks in Australia’s eastern states and in New Zealand are leading to a greater compliance in COVID-safe behaviours by Australians, th...

Patient safety trials suggest small changes can have big impacts
August 18, 2020BehaviourWorks Australia conducted six behaviour change trials as part of a VMIA Patient Safety Research and Innovation Program. The results show that...

COVID-19 media outreach
August 13, 2020Since the pandemic hit in March, our behavioural experts have been sought out by the media to provide expert opinion on the vital role of behaviour ch...

A new measure of our connection with nature
July 23, 2020Human relationships with nature – how we perceive, relate to and interact with the natural environment – have gained increasing prominence in the acad...

Behaviour change 101 series: How to do a Rapid Review
July 22, 2020A practical guide on how to use Rapid Reviews to gather evidence for better decision-making.

Australians fail to meet physical activity guidelines during pandemic
July 10, 2020A survey with 1,084 adults in April this year on physical activity and sedentary behaviour during the pandemic found that the majority of Australians ...

Behaviour change micro-credential attracts strong interest
July 8, 2020Our behaviour change micro-credential is up and running and attracting professionals around the world.

Behaviour Change Bootcamps
June 28, 2020Behaviour Change Bootcamps offer intensive, group-based training to influential groups within organisations, allowing them to become skilled advocates...

SCRUB project wave 4: Australians’ views on private gatherings, remote working and getting tested
June 24, 2020As we continue to be inundated with reports of COVID-19 cases, recommendations and the latest updates on restrictions, SCRUB has been collecting data ...

Avoiding single-use plastics in a pandemic
June 24, 2020Just because plastic avoidance is a bit different now doesn't mean it can't be part of the new normal. In The Conversation, Kim Borg offers suggestion...

Emails vs letters. What works, when and why
June 12, 2020When large numbers of people need to be contacted, we're often asked: should we send emails or letters? Well ... it depends on the factors at play. Th...

How and why we decided to track Covid-19 behaviours
June 3, 2020Monash Lens focuses on the remarkable work that two of our Research Fellows have done to help policymakers find the right messages to communicate thro...

Wave 3 SCRUB Covid-19 survey: Findings about Australians’ protective behaviours
May 22, 2020Data from wave 3 of our COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB) study show how protective behaviours, such as hand-washing, are dynamicall...

Reflections on coming out of lockdown – from prisoners
May 20, 2020What can US prisoners teach us about coming out of lockdown in a way that also breaks down our mental and emotional constraints?

Covid-19 SCRUB survey wave 2: What are Australians doing and who are they listening to?
May 13, 2020Waves 1 and 2 of the Survey of COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB) project are giving policymakers actionable insights into public atti...

Four building blocks of a successful behaviour change campaign
May 12, 2020Originally published by Apolitical, this compelling 'how to' by our health specialist, A/Prof Peter Bragge, provides some handy tips on how to make yo...

Behaviour change PHD program wins major award
April 8, 2020The Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) has awarded BehaviourWorks the Award for Excellence in Promoting Industry Engagement in Graduate Re...

Emotional and behavioural reactions to the unexpected
March 26, 2020To address the emotional, cognitive and behavioural manifestations of the unexpected context that is COVID-19, we need to recognise, accept and work w...

How personality influences your ability cope
March 25, 2020What makes some people behave sensibly in a time of crisis and others go off in strange directions? It all comes down to personality traits, says PhD ...

Social distancing or social connectedness?
March 25, 2020In times of crisis, such as COVID-19, researchers argue that using labels such as 'social distancing' can make people feel even more isolated and anxi...

A behavioural science perspective on panic buying
March 5, 2020With supermarket shelves being stripped bare due to panic buying, two of our leading behavioural scientists talk about the psychology of this behaviou...

Are 4 bins the answer to Victoria’s waste problem?
March 3, 2020Victoria's new waste policy came into effect in Feb/March 2020. Will it be effective? BehaviourWorks waste experts, Jenni Downes, explores the pros an...

Behaviour change 101 series: Five steps to select the right behaviour/s to target
February 26, 2020At BehaviourWorks Australia, we're committed to improving behaviour change literacy. In this new series, we provide specific tips on how to achieve de...

Men’s behaviour needs to change
February 25, 2020In wake of yet another major family violence incident, our researchers pen another important article in The Conversation on the need to shift attitude...

Bushfire crisis a critical moment to encourage pro-environmental behaviours
February 3, 2020The Australian bushfire crisis represents a 'critical moment' to use behavioural science to encourage individuals to act for nature.

BehaviourWorks Year in Review 2019
January 30, 2020As a new year begins, it is worth reflecting on our collective achievements as part of a broader behaviour change community.

Social Systems Evidence
December 20, 2019An important new initiative of the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and McMaster University, SSE will give decision-makers clearer evidence of...

Behaviour change PhD candidates showcase work in progress
December 11, 2019PhD candidates enrolled in the world-first Behaviour Change Graduate Research Industry Partnership program present their initial ideas and research to...

Pathways to Transition to a Circular Textile Economy in Australia
November 14, 2019A series of interviews with Australian fashion and textile sector industry experts has revealed that while many are employing sustainable business pra...

10 questions with a behaviour change practitioner Lily Tidy
November 14, 2019A series where we talk to some of Australia's leading or emerging behaviour change practitioners. This edition with The Shannon Company's Lily Tidy.


8 tips for developing and designing successful behaviour change apps and websites
September 5, 2019Behaviour change platforms, such as apps and websites, are being eveloped to elicit a plethora of different behaviour change activities, from promotin...


One Size Doesn’t Have to Fit All
August 14, 2019One of the achievements of behavioural economics was to overhaul the view of humans as selfish and rational creatures. But another assumption has gone...

Opening the door to an inclusive Australia
July 11, 2019An intervention to reduce Islamophobia

How to manage the coming ‘tsunami’ of paper health records
July 10, 2019Behavioural research digital health


Construal Level Theory: Going beyond your senses
July 4, 2019Construal Level Theory describes the relationship between psychological distance and the extent to which people's thinking is concrete or abstract. T...

How to get patients moving
May 29, 2019Dr Brea Kunstler has been 'working the room'; leading discussions on the ways in which physiotherapists can use behavioural insights to encourage peop...

Habits, they’re more important than you think
May 15, 2019Around 40% of what you do is performed everyday in the same location, and around 70% of this is done without thought or deliberation. Unfortunately, t...

OECD report: BI means better policy
May 15, 2019The OECD recently released a report on how Behavioural Insights can deliver better policies. One chapter was co-authored by our own Morgan Tear.

A protocol for better board behaviour
May 10, 2019Effective health service boards keep our hospital systems running. But how do board members learn the skills needed to be effective and challenge them...

Want to know how to change behaviour?
May 6, 2019Knowing HOW to change behaviour isn't easy. Thankfully, Susan Michie and her colleagues introduced a framework to help researchers and practitioners s...

Measuring public value
May 5, 2019Nick Fawkner and Stefan Kaufman believe that it is important to be able to measure how government organisations generate public value, so they underto...

Altruism that really clicks
March 15, 2019Websites that encourage good behaviours are often less effective than websites that encourage purchases. A new paper sets out to address this by givi...

Reflections on the research-policy-nexus
March 13, 2019Following a 2018 roundtable on “Research Impact in Policy” at the 2018 Global Evidence and Implementation Summit, Wiley Publishing invited BehaviourWo...

Grant for wearable device incorporating behaviour change
February 18, 2019The potential of using wearable technology to tackle global health issues like diabetes will now be explored thanks a $2.15M grant awarded by the Aust...

What is Prosociality?
February 1, 2019Understanding prosocial behaviours is important with respect to tackling United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; in particular reducing inequali...

Our GRIP wins its first award
December 13, 2018Launched in 2018 and supported by Monash University and industry partners, the Behaviour Change Graduate Research Industry Partnership Program (GRIP) ...

Many labs make right work
November 30, 2018Many Labs 2 is the latest in a series of international projects to see if influential psychology experiments can be reproduced. Almost 200 psychologi...

A hypothetical ‘#Weetoo’ moment
November 19, 2018Incontinence is a widespread medical issue which affects millions worldwide, but often not discussed because of embarrassment or social stigma. The C...

Safer roads are no accident
November 14, 2018A new book entitled, From Roadside to Recovery: The Story of the Victorian State Trauma System, details how a grim statistic – 1034 – was a catalyst f...

INSPIRE for better communications
November 13, 2018Recognised as the first model of behaviour change specifically designed to help public administrators, BehaviourWorks’ INSPIRE framework describes sev...

Game changers
October 24, 2018Many human behaviours are being targeted by game-makers; healthy eating, medicine, coding, buying goods, using social media and education. BehaviourWo...

The e-gains of e-government
October 24, 2018Increasing the uptake of e-services is critical for government agencies like VicRoads, which handles a wide range of vehicle-related tasks such as ren...

A change isn’t always a holiday
October 11, 2018A paper on the impact of Rural Retirement Migration explores the issues of retirees choosing to relocate to rural locations and the impact that this h...

Best behaviour before the Senate
September 26, 2018The Australian Government has created a standard medical record - My Health Record (MHR) - which contains health information that can be accessed by a...

The truth about Honesty
August 31, 2018It’s estimated that dishonesty costs society hundreds of millions of dollars each year. BehaviourWorks Australia’s Nick Faulkner reviewed the literatu...

Why we love this list
June 20, 2018Sustainability Victoria has come up with a video campaign – the Love-a-list Challenge – to highlight how much of our bins contain avoidable food waste...

Doing well – and good – at the same time
June 13, 2018With Professor Dave Griggs, BehaviourWorks Director, Liam Smith, has proposed a new system of giving. Under this system, anyone on a high annual incom...

GRIP launch successful!
April 20, 2018Behaviour change needs a new cohort of PhD qualified researchers capable of working with industry. Monash University's Graduate Research Industry Part...

More Masters to influence change
March 28, 2018BehaviourWorks Australia, working with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, is delivering the first-ever specialised behaviour change unit. ...

A random approach to better science
March 19, 2018In his new book Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World, Andrew Leigh puts forward the case that randomised trials are sorely lacking i...

Staying AELERT to regulation
March 6, 2018BWA presents some new behavioural tools at the Australasian Environmental Law Enforcement and Regulators Network Conference.

Giving patients the ability to make decisions about their healthcare
February 28, 2018Healthcare decisions can be complex. There are several contributing factors and multiple treatment options, which can place patients in complicated, c...

A conversation about oBikes
January 16, 2018Obikes aren't the problem - it's our behaviours.

Giving Trauma The Lancet
November 8, 2017Dr Peter Bragge is part of a Monash team identifying better treatments of TBI (traumatic brain injury)


Some wins for Windermere
October 24, 2017BehaviourWorks gets fast results on slow payers

oBikes. oBoy.
September 22, 2017Are oBikes a solution or a tripping hazard?

A message of hope – from marketing
August 23, 2017Visiting academics Professors Andrea Prothero and Pierre McDonagh present key ideas from their work on how macro marketing can help sustainability.

An even more inconvenient truth
August 21, 2017A BWA article in the Conversation asks if big issue docos bring about change

The Dark Side of Behaviour Change
August 10, 2017An article on how we're getting savvy to being influenced

Some nudges towards healthier eating
June 12, 2017Four BWA researchers have written an article for The Conversation detailing some of the findings of a review into the best way to encouraging healthy ...

Masters of the (sustainable) universe
June 1, 2017The inaugural Master of Environment and Sustainability course is the first cross-faculty Masters course at Monash University. It’s also the first time...

Public value is an actual thing
May 25, 2017Can you put a value on government services? Yes you can.

The science of walking in others people’s shoes
March 10, 2017BWA's Nick Faulkner has had a new paper published exploring the link between cosmopolitanism and empathy