This paper reviews the findings from the last 20 years on the behavioural factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt environmentally sustainable practices. It also proposes policy options to increase adoption, based on these behavioural factors and embedded in the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Behavioural factors are grouped into three clusters, from more distal to more proximal: (i) dispositional factors; (ii) social factors and (iii) cognitive factors. Overall, the review demonstrates that considering behavioural factors enriches economic analyses of farmer decision-making, and can lead to more realistic and effective agri-environmental policies.

Purpose-This commentary argues that social marketing and the application of behavioural sciences to policy constitute two converging paths towards better policies. It highlights points of convergence and divergence between both disciplines and the potential benefits of further embedding social marketing principles and methods within the recent trend of applying behavioural sciences to policy. Design/methodology/approach-The commentary relies on a review of the behavioural sciences and social marketing literatures and on an analysis of institutional reports reviewing cases of behaviourally informed policies. Findings-Behavioural sciences are increasingly informing policies to promote societal well-being. Social marketing has seldom been explicitly considered as being part of this phenomenon, although it is de facto. Both disciplines share similar end-goals, inform similar policy applications and are rooted in behavioural analysis. They diverge in their theoretical frameworks, their relative emphasis on behaviour change and the span of interventions they generate. Several benefits of embedding social marketing principles and methods within the current way of applying behavioural sciences to policy are identified. Practical implications-Scholars applying behavioural sciences to policy are encouraged, when appropriate, to use the insights and methods from social marketing. Social marketing can engage in a dialogue with behavioural sciences to explore how to pilot the convergence of both approaches in practice. Originality/value-The novelty of this contribution lies in providing the first comparison of the application of behavioural sciences to policy with social marketing, and in using the policy-making cycle framework to map the contributions and complementarities of both disciplines.

Misinformation surrounding crises poses a significant challenge for public institutions. Understanding the relative effectiveness of different types of interventions to counter misinformation and understanding which segments of the population are most or least receptive to them, is crucial. We conduct a preregistered online experiment involving 5,228 participants from Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Poland. Participants were exposed to misinformation on climate change or Covid-19. In addition, they were pre-emptively exposed to a prebunk, warning them of commonly used misleading strategies, before encountering the misinformation, or a debunking intervention afterward. The source of the intervention (i.e. the European Commission) was either revealed or not. Findings show that both interventions effectively change the four outcome variables in the desired direction in almost all cases, with debunks sometimes being more effective than prebunks. Moreover, revealing the source of the interventions does not significantly impact their overall effectiveness. Although one case of undesirable effect heterogeneity – debunks with revealed source were less effective in decreasing credibility of misinformation for people with low trust in the European Union – was observed, the results mostly suggest that the European Commission, and possibly other institutions, can confidently debunk and prebunk misinformation regardless of the trust level of its recipients.

Economic experiments have emerged as a powerful tool for agricultural policy evaluations. In this perspective, we argue that involving stakeholders in the design of economic experiments is critical to satisfy mandates for evidence‐based policies and encourage policymakers' usage of experimental results. To identify advantages and disadvantages of involving stakeholders when designing experiments, we synthesize observations from six experiments in Europe and North America. In these experiments, the primary advantage was the ability to learn within realistic decision environments and thus make relevant policy recommendations. Disadvantages include complicated implementation and constraints on treatment design. We compile 12 recommendations for researchers.