Behavioural insights for a better Tasmania

This year, the University of Tasmania celebrated the launch of the State’s first behavioural insights research lab.

The Tasmanian Behavioural Lab is a state-of-the-art facility that conducts research and teaching, and provides businesses, not-for-profit agencies and government departments with access to behavioural insights to improve the lives of Tasmanians.

To understand why behavioural insights matter, you need to understand how underlying psychological factors and biases influence decisions that affect us all says Tasmanian Behavioural Lab Director Professor Swee-Hoon Chuah.

"By understanding why people make the decisions they do, like deciding to smoke or eat highly processed food, we can suggest and test methods to encourage more positive choices through behaviour change policy and programs to create a better, healthier and more sustainable Tasmania,” Chuah said.

“These strategies and interventions can also be applied in the private sector, and we recently helped an international app developer to improve customer engagement and retention on their app.”

Before launching the Tasmanian Behavioural Lab, Professor Chuah worked at the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government on projects like Better Choices, which looked at helping online gamblers make informed decisions.

“Using behavioural insights, we were able to develop and test interventions that provided online gamblers with feedback on their losses,” Chuah said.

“By presenting them with evidence of their activities through statements detailing their deposits, withdrawals, wins and losses, we were able to reduce the amounts gambled.”

With teaching and research activities well underway, the next generation of behavioural economists are already exploring what makes Tasmanians tick.

For Hobart College economics teacher and alumnus Matt Dalziel, studying a Graduate Certificate in Behavioural Insights with the Tasmanian Behavioural Lab has been eye-opening.

“Initially, it was just curiosity that made me enrol, but after studying with the lab, I realised how much potential there is across so many different sectors to utilise behavioural insights,” Dalziel said.

“It can be taught and applied in education in lots of different ways, and it’s really appealing to my students because it opens their eyes to what economics can be.”