Behaviorally informed political economy analyses: How behavioral science can enrich the process of thinking and working politically in development
Development efforts travel a complex terrain: where local needs and resources, political interests, power dynamics, and cultural history cross paths in exciting, but often confusing ways. Many vital services may…
There’s a “we” in Nairobi Evidence Week. Creating resilience in evidence based policy through collaboration.
People who work to translate research evidence into effective policy have long critiqued the yawning chasm that separates the research and policy worlds. On one side of the chasm are…
The work is not done: creating new paths to an equitable world in uncertain times
There are many valid perspectives from which to criticise the development sector. A lot of the work in the space, for example, fails to achieve the intended expectations. One could…
Buttons, boxes, and biases: The illusion and desire for control
Have you ever found yourself desperately pressing the "close door" button in an elevator, convinced that your actions are speeding up the process? If so, you’ve experienced the illusion of…
Bringing the economy closer to home. Using urban exploration to unlock economic opportunities for underserved communities in Nairobi
Plato’s allegory of the cave from his work Republic asks us to imagine a group of prisoners chained in a cave whose only view of the outside world is a…
Teachers know best? Navigating the unknown in sharing our knowledge
This article is part of Busara’s Tafakari 2025 yearbook. You can download the whole yearbook here. During my earlier days at Busara (more than ten years ago) my job description involved…
Speaking up for what is right. Using moral values to drive civic engagement in Kenya.
Democracy, by definition, needs the public to be engaged and active in its processes. Globally, civic engagement is influenced by a multitude of factors, including moral values, political trust, leadership…
Tafakari Yearbook 2024
  Yearbook You are not alone: human behavior under pressure Download PDF Busara SECTORBehavioral sciencePROJECT TYPEYearbookBEHAVIORAL THEMECollaboration| Community| Engagement OVERVIEW As an organization dedicated to behavioral science in pursuit of…
We’re WEIRD: addressing the narrowness of behavioral science
Note: this blog post is an excerpt from Steve’s chapter in the soon-to-be-published book: Behavioral Science for Development: Insights and Strategies for Global Impact, edited by Luis Artavia-Mora & Zarak…
Before you wreck yourself: A guide to facing the hard truth that we are all one level removed
Groundwork Before you wreck yourself: A guide to facing the hard truth that we are all one level removed Download PDF PARTNERMIT GOV/LABSECTORResearchPROJECT TYPEGroundworkBEHAVIORAL THEMEDiversity| Equity| Inclusion OVERVIEW In…
What is a Global South organization? Exploring the meaning of terminology and identity for Busara’s knowledge production
Exploring the meaning of terminology and identity for Busara’s knowledge production.
Embracing dignity in aid and development: Lessons from five inspiring organizations
  Case study Embracing Dignity in Aid and Development: Lessons from Five Inspiring Organizations Download PDF Tom Wein, Joel Wambua PARTNER IDinsight SECTOR Philanthropy PROJECT TYPE Case Study BEHAVIORAL THEME…
Participant voice first: The Busara research agenda on ethical research in the Global South
Groundwork Participant voice first: The Busara research agenda on ethical research in the Global South Download PDF SECTOR Ethical research PROJECT TYPE Field and Lab Experiments BEHAVIORAL THEME Integrity…
Unlikely tools for unlikely times: 9 things to consider before using IVR as a research tool
In 2016, INC ran an interview titled “This CEO runs a billion-dollar company with no offices or email.” The interview profiled Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, which runs WordPress. WordPress…
Remotely different: a tale of research during COVID
When you hear the word remote, it probably signals an access challenge. It creates the visual image of a rural or distant area, far off from the general population, possibly…
The Little Jab Book: 18 behavioral science strategies for increasing vaccination uptake
Case study The Little Jab Book:18 behavioral science strategies for increasing vaccination uptake Download PDF PARTNER Save The Children | Common Thread SECTOR Health PROJECT TYPE Field Experiments BEHAVIORAL THEME…
Driving behavior change in the face of COVID: is increasing access to reliable information effective?
A decision alone is not enough, it must be an informed one. To achieve highly impactful decisions, one must have access to quality information, shared through the right reliable channels,…
A Partnership to teach: training the next generation of behavioral scientists with the MIT Governance Lab
In recent years, behavioral sciences, or ways to better understand determinants of human behavior, have emerged as a leading innovation across disciplines and sectors. These novel methods and data allow…
The Process is the Outcome: testing whether gendered processes create cultural distance for women in the workplace.
Women’s day often brings with it a resurgence of disheartening statistics such as only 1% of venture capital in Africa has gone to female founders, women fill less than 20% of US…
Can TV teach children comprehension?
The things we believe about something, whether true or untrue, define our approach towards it. In Europe, for example, the tomato was considered poisonous in the 1700s as it was…
Assembly Line of Success: from the low-hanging fruit to long-term social change
Imagine waking up one morning with a burning desire to bring about social change in the developing world (for some of us, all over again). How many ways can you…
BeScights: Experience from three years of applied behavioral science in India
Report BeScights: Experience from three years of applied behavioral science in India Download PDF PARTNERDishaColLab 23SECTORGrowth and ExpansionPROJECT TYPEField ExperimentsBEHAVIORAL THEMEPerspective| Perception OVERVIEW Understanding Behavioral Science BeScIGHTS is a…
Tackling health misinformation in humanitarian settings using behavioral science
Report Tackling health misinformation in humanitarian settings using behavioral science Download PDF Busara SECTOR Health PROJECT TYPE Field Experiments BEHAVIORAL THEME Misinformation OVERVIEW Dealing with Misinformation in the Covid…
Adoption of community monitoring improves common pool resource management across contexts
  Case study Adoption of community monitoring improves common pool resource management across contexts Download PDF SECTOR GovernmentPROJECT TYPE Field and Lab ExperimentsBEHAVIORAL THEME Altruism| perspective | monitoring OVERVIEW Community monitoring…
Busara case study exhibition, SBCC Summit 2022
  Case study Busara case study exhibition: Social behavior change communication summit Morocco, Dec. 5-9, 2022 Download PDF SECTORBehavioral sciencePROJECT TYPE Field and Lab ExperimentsBEHAVIORAL THEMEUrgency OVERVIEW This document breaks…
Improving teacher involvement and cook performance for a national school feeding programme
  Case study Improving teacher involvement and cook performance for a national school feeding programme Download PDF PARTNERThe Nigerian Economic summit Group |NHGSFP |AccentureSECTORSocial aid |InvestmentPROJECT TYPEField ExperimentsSAMPLE SIZE210 SchoolsBEHAVIORAL…
What drives knowledge seeking, sharing, and use among family planning professionals? Behavioral evidence from Africa, Asia, and the United States
  Case study What drives knowledge seeking, sharing, and use among family planning professionals? Download PDF PARTNERGlobal Health: Science and PractiseSECTORHealthPROJECT TYPE Field and Lab ExperimentsBEHAVIORAL THEMEChoice | Knowledge management…
Alleviating time poverty among the working poor: a pre-registered longitudinal field experiment.
  Academic Paper Alleviating time poverty among the working poor: a pre-registered longitudinal field experiment. Download PDF SECTOROthers RELATED CONTENT Featured A complicated relationship January 3, 2024 Featured Enhancing SRH…
Participation Improves Collective Decisions (When It Involves Deliberation): Experimental Evidence From Kenya.
  Academic Paper Participation improves collective decisions (when it involves deliberation): Experimental evidence from Kenya. Download PDF SECTORGovernance RELATED CONTENT Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different…
Stress, Ethnicity, and Prosocial Behavior.
Academic Paper Stress, ethnicity, and prosocial behavior Download PDF Johannes Haushofer, Sara Lowes, Abednego Musau, David M. Ndetei, Nathan Nunn, Moritz Poll & Nancy Qian SECTOROther OVERVIEW We attempt to understand the relationship between stress, coethnic…
Value and validation: how feedback enhances the quality of research outputs
If there’s one thing participants could change about research, it would be feedback. In a recent qualitative study, Busara’s research participants told us that they would want to learn the…
Seen but not heard: ethical considerations for inclusive research in the global south
“They (open-ended questions) are the best types of questions to use in research because they do not confine someone to a certain point, but instead, the person will have the…
One size does not fit all: how our cross cultural research agenda is making room for truly generalizable results
An academic paper is often judged by how well it has understood the field it is studying and its contribution towards advancing said field. By that standard behavioral economics literature…
The sausage is in the making: how we’re refining research methods for higher quality data
We have all been through it at some point in our academic lives. Palpable tension, and just a sprinkle [or five] of panic when the exam invigilator barks “15 minutes…
The Little Jab Book: 18 behavioral science strategies for increasing vaccination uptake
  Guide The Little Jab Book: 18 behavioral science strategies for increasing vaccination uptake Download PDF Anamika Suresh & Dhwani Yagnaraman PARTNERCommon ThreadSave The Children InternationalSECTORHealth OVERVIEW The Little Jab…
To live or not to leave: the tension between meeting basic needs and social distancing
Introduction For wealthy people from wealthy countries, it may not always be easy, though usually quite feasible to be socially distant: Just stay home as much as possible, maybe read…
Saving the children: how to create effective messaging to stop violence against children
In an experiment where people were asked to place numbers along a linear axis, many respondents placed a million, roughly halfway between a thousand and a billion (it really doesn’t go there).…
Decision lab 101: why and how to set up a decision lab
“Why do people choose the things they choose?” is a question faced by most professionals in today’s world. Whatever work you are doing, the end goal is up to a…
Stress and Temporal Discounting: Do Domains Matter?
Recent work in behavioral economics has asked whether stress affects economic choice. Here we focus on the effects of stress on temporal discounting, for which previous studies have produced inconsistent…
How to help poor informal workers to save a bit: Evidence from a field experiment in Kenya.
Worldwide, the majority of workers hold jobs in the informal sector that do not provide access to social insurance programs. We partnered with a savings product provider in Kenya to…
Religion as a Stimulant of Political Participation: Experimental Evidence from Nairobi, Kenya
In this article we explore how certain religious messages may spur or constrain political participation. Specifically, we test whether religious messages that provide individuals a positive self-image can act as…
Redistribution and Group Participation: Experimental Evidence from Africa and the UK
We design an original laboratory experiment to investigate whether redistributive actions hinder the formation of Pareto-improving groups. We test, in an anonymous setting with no feedback, whether people choose to…
Busara voices on collaboration: three perspectives from our teams
COVID-19 has imposed a different perspective on everyone. Across the world people have been forced to rethink how they approach their everyday lives, their work and everything in between. Busara…
How Preeti was born: a beginner’s guide to contextualizing behavioral measures
Are behavioral biases universal? This is a question that Busara has long set out to answer. In 2016, we ran our first large cross-cultural study towards this question and quickly…
Is your data inclusive: optimizing results by eliminating the hidden costs of research participation
There are many references that clearly show the difference between equality, equity and justice. They exist because many times one can be mistaken for the other — and well intentioned…