An Assessment of the Applicability of Behavioral Economics’ Tools to Policy Making Process Considering Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Achieving sustainable development goals in a very dynamic and complicated world requires innovated solutions. As people are in the heart of the developmental process, understanding what motivates people and what drives their behaviors is a must for designing policies targeting the achievement of developmental goals. This paper aims to assess how the behavioral economics’ tools may be applied to directing people’s behaviors toward more sustainable activities and then contributing to achieve sustainable development goals. Using deductive qualitative approach, and a comparative analysis, the study explores and discusses to what extent insights and techniques from behavioral economics may affect and change policy making process and then public policies' outcomes specifically in the context of sustainable development disciplines. The results showed a vital role of behavioral economics tools in developing public policies in accordance to real behaviors of people which -in turn- help in achieving sustainable development goals. Moreover, it was concluded that changing humans' behaviors toward more sustainable patterns of life provides so many opportunities to strengthen the effectiveness of policies for sustainable development in both developed and developing countries. Using behavioral economics tools, policymakers can design more effective policies to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).