A Handbook of Behavioral Insights to Social and Policy Change

Unit 1, theoretical foundations of behavioral decision science, will include chapters that contextualize decision-making across diverse cultural and ecological settings, with attention to constructs such as bounded and ecological rationality, the role of emotion, identity, and moral intuitions in behavioral choices, and anticipatory cognition in temporal decision framing.

Unit 2, health behavior and public health interventions, will explore behavioral approaches to key public health challenges, including vaccine hesitancy, health misinformation, and adolescent reproductive decision-making. Chapters may cover topics such as promoting digital health literacy among emerging adults, nudging preventive health behaviors in low-resource settings, and designing community-based interventions for mental health access.

Unit 3, education, learning, and youth behavior, will include chapters on student motivation and dropout prevention, classroom decision-making, the application of solution mindset and growth framing in pedagogy, and strategies for addressing digital distractions in learning environments. Inclusive education practices through empathy and behavioral adaptation, as well as culturally grounded behavioral curricula in collectivist educational systems, will also be explored. A chapter based on a novel andragogical model developed and published as a patent by the editor will be included in this section.

Unit 4, digital behavior and technology-mediated decisions, will include behavioral strategies for reducing smartphone overuse, anticipatory media engagement for digital well-being, the use of gamification and nudges in tech usage, algorithmic influences in decision fatigue, and emerging behavioral risks in AI-mediated environments

Unit 5, environmental sustainability and behavioral shifts, will include chapters on how behavioral insights can support climate action, including the framing of climate risk, and the promotion of sustainable behaviors related to water use, energy conservation, and waste management. It may also include chapters on adolescent environmental decision-making, collective efficacy in environmental justice, and sustainability nudges in consumption patterns.

Unit 6, financial and economic decision making, will feature chapters on behavioral barriers to saving and planning, financial inclusion in contexts of scarcity, gendered dimensions of economic behavior, cognitive biases in ethical consumption, and informal economic systems under uncertainty.

Unit 7, governance, law, and civic behavior, will address topics such as enhancing public compliance through behavioral nudges, building institutional trust, applying behavioral insights to reduce corruption, community policing and justice delivery, and the design of e-governance systems that foster civic responsibility and effective grievance redressal.

Unit 8, organizational behavior and workplace decision-making, is expected to include discussions on leadership and team-based decision making, behavioral strategies for workplace well-being and resilience, solution-focused organizational culture, reducing implicit bias in decision systems, and conducting behavioral audits for ethical workplace environments.

Unit 9, parenting, family systems, and early development, will have topics including framing discipline and caregiving decision in collectivist family systems, behavioral decision-making among caregivers of neurodiverse children, intergenerational patterns in health and education choices, and cultivating empathy and autonomy through behavioral scaffolding in early development.

Unit 10, methods, models, and innovations in behavioral research, will include chapters on designing culturally sensitive behavioral experiments, measuring behavioral outcomes across diverse populations, employing digital ethnography and behavioral observation tools, utilizing mixed-method and community-based research designs, and presenting emerging conceptual innovations in behavioral science frameworks.