META BI: a tool for describing behavioural interventions

Abstract

A lack of common terminology and shared understanding of behavioural interventions across academic disciplines and professional groups limits the multidisciplinary application of such interventions and our collective ability to share and compare their effects. The current study attempts to narrow this gap by developing a comprehensive classification system of nudges and similar behavioural interventions that can aid researchers and practitioners in understanding and describing such interventions to steer desired behaviour change. We develop an initial classification system drawing on our expert knowledge and subsequently validate it in an iterative procedure with 44 experts from various fields, disciplines and sectors during two feedback rounds (i.e. a Delphi approach). The result is META BI (Mapping of Environment, Target group and Agent for Behavioural Interventions), a classification system describing interventions across 20 dimensions and using 17 distinct psychological mechanisms. META BI is aligned with a system lens, shifting the focus from single true effects to contextualised assessments. It can help to understand, compare and evaluate nudges and selected interventions for the desired effects.