A South-South approach to Behavioural Science.
Announcing Busara and CSBC’s Strategic Partnership to advance behavioural science in India
We are excited to announce a strategic partnership between the Centre for Social Behaviour Change (CSBC) at Ashoka University and Busara Centre for Behavioral Economics to advance behavioural science for social challenges in India. CSBC is set up by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create an institution in India that is reputed for behavioural change initiatives among low-income and marginalised populations. Busara is a non-profit organisation, based in Nairobi, Kenya with offices across Africa, focused on applying behavioural science for poverty alleviation.
Our shared vision
Both organisations believe that the true advancement of behavioural science in developing countries is possible only through appropriate infrastructure and local expertise to translate insights into action.
The partnership will focus on two priority outcomes to translate this shared vision to reality:
- Expand, strengthen, and standardise research labs for evidence-based policy: Research labs are a critical piece of infrastructure to advance strong behavioural science research and interventions. They allow us to test ideas and intuitions and understand what works. As a collaboration with CSBC, we intend to build and run a set of labs across India, building process standards for behavioural science research that are rigorous, fit for purpose and endorsed by the academic community. This will build local capacity for behavioural science and be connected to other behavioural science research labs in the Global South. We hope that the labs will also expand the scope of academic research in India and position the next generation of behaviour scientists in India and other regions to collaborate with their colleagues in the Global North.
- Synthesise the knowledge of behavioural science in development to identify best practices for running behavioural science initiatives globally: The findings these labs will generate are only valuable if widely applied. As a leading behavioural science research institution focused on poverty alleviation, we aim to take a more local stance to guide behavioural insights for development. This involves not only adapting insights, currently generated mostly in developed economies, but also developing new findings that may challenge or expand our view of behavioural science applications across cultures. For example, how can we embed nudges in cultures with strong local beliefs and rituals? How do we create intention and new mental models for behaviours that we often take for granted in the West? “Nudges”, as defined in developed economies, often aim to aid recipients in following through on a clearly stated intention or desire, such as saving enough for retirement, completing a complex student aid application process, or paying your taxes on time. Many of the behavioural challenges in developing economies involve complex social dynamics and may require additional focus on creating intention and understanding social systems (Gauri et al, 2017).
Our research, design and testing interventions with local populations will help to answer some of these questions.
Our partnership in action
As a first outcome of this partnership, we are excited to launch a joint research initiative with support from the Omidyar Network in the area of data privacy. Given the growth of mobile technology and its role in financial inclusion, this program, branded “IntAct”, aims to understand behavioural factors to building a stronger data privacy environment.
This collaboration will contribute to this body of research with a particular lens for informing policy in India and Kenya. More specifically, we aim to design a set of lab and field experiments that focus on two primary research questions:
- Can nudges prompt more privacy conscious decision-making among users?
- How and when can data privacy be made as a business advantage for firms?
