Blending Design and Behavioural Science in Three Linked Public Policy Experiments Towards a Circular Economy

People’s behaviour, choices and desires are increasingly foregrounded in the challenge of decoupling the material and energy footprint of everyday life from wellbeing and happiness. Two leading applied perspectives on people and behaviour in public policy and administration are human-centred design (HCD) and Behavioural Insights (BI). A false but common dichotomy contrasts BI as at best incremental, and, at worst, regressive and avoidant due to a focus on ‘nudging’ change at the margins to implement policy, and HCD as participatory emancipation, focusing on designing out the friction between user experience and ‘top-down’ policy agendas. While raising valid issues, such critical perspectives neglect a much more nuanced, balanced and integrated body of theory and practice blending both design and behavioural science experimentation into sequential and mixed efforts for systems change—what we label Behavioural Public Policy and Administration (BPPA). This chapter reflects on three linked BPPA interventions that took place as part of a multi-agency collaboration on waste and circular economy. We tackled household recycling contamination, consumer eco-labelling and business innovation for circularity. Our government partners include practitioners who routinely blend and integrate both design and behavioural approaches in policy innovation methods. We argue for the value of a focus on behaviour as opening the potential for integration and complementarity between jurisdictions, stakeholders and disciplinary perspectives, while also exploring the implications of findings from our projects for the transition to a CE.