Turkish Review of Communication Studies

Abstract

The last few years saw increasing use
of behavioral insight as a tool by the governments all around the globe.
Numerous pieces of scholarship published in the last decade, not to mention
substantial efforts in research, countless reports and other studies show that
behavioral insight offers value-added solutions to many policy problems. When
combined with the rather conventional tools available to the governments, such
as rewards (subsidies, incentives, means of support, scholarships, loans, etc.)
and punishments (traffic and tax fines, legal obligations, restrictions etc.),
behavioral insights can be used in soft-policy contexts. Enabling effective,
easy to implement and productive applications, behavioral insights can be used
in many issue areas including but not limited to the environment, health,
education, energy, finance, and social security. The study was designed as a
piece of descriptive research. The major axes of the study are the benefits
behavioral insight practices offer over the conventional policy tools, the
specific issue areas where behavioral insights are employed by the governments,
the processes whereby behavioral insights are used as public policy tools, and
finally the ethical approaches to behavioral insights. As one of the first
studies done on this matter in Turkey, the study would contribute to the
literature in the fields of behavioral insights and nudging.