A Meta-Meta-Analysis of Behavior Change Interventions: Two Tales of Behavior Change

Tim Kaiser, Juliane Kloidt, Jutta Mata and Ralph Hertwig

No 11863, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Behavioral science interventions like incentives, nudges, and boosts are increasingly used in public policy, but their effectiveness remains debated. We conducted a meta-meta-analysis on behavior change interventions across health, finance, and sustainability outcomes. Our analysis covers 838 effects from 269 meta-analyses, encompassing 6,327 randomized controlled trials and over 9 million individuals from non-clinical populations of all ages in both developed and developing economies. Our findings tell two stories: First, extracted treatment effects are generally positive but highly variable (M = .173; SD = .195), indicating some interventions impact behavior. However, after adjusting for publication bias, the mean posterior effect pooling domains and interventions is .063 (95% credible interval .044 to .08, BF10 = 139.8) with substantial unexplained heterogeneity (τ̂ = .129). Future research requires improved reporting and deeper contextual analysis to address this heterogeneity. Even small effect sizes can yield significant impacts when scaled across populations and sustained over time.

Keywords: behaviour-change; intervention; heterogeneity; boosting; nudging; publication bias; Bayesian meta-meta-analysis. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 G41 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-nud
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11863.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11863

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().