Accelerating the use of behavioural science in climate policymaking

To achieve our climate goals, the people of Scotland will need to make significant changes to the way we work and play. Behavioural science can offer valuable insights for climate policymaking and can help to encourage behaviour change, but only a fraction policy decisions are currently informed by this research.

In September 2025, we held a roundtable with the Scottish Government to explore how behavioural science can be better integrated into climate and environmental policymaking. Academics and senior civil servants worked to identify new projects or approaches to trial in Scottish Government over the next six months. This report summarises the key discussions and proposed projects from the event.

Key discussions and proposed projects

Roundtable participants discussed the following three key challenges related to integrating behavioural science into climate policymaking – each time asking ‘What can we try in the next six months to address this?’:

• Challenge 1: Prioritising where to embed behavioural science
• Challenge 2: Engaging policymakers with behavioural evidence
• Challenge 3: Improving the evaluation of behavioural interventions

From these discussions, participants identified six proposed projects:

• Develop a prioritisation matrix that ranks policy areas and their corresponding behaviours, based on a structured framework adapted to Scotland’s policy priorities.
• Hold a ‘mutual learning’ workshop for senior policymakers and behavioural researchers to explore climate policy, behavioural science in policymaking’ and opportunities for collaboration. 
• Scope a project to integrate oral history or storytelling into policy design and public engagement.
• Scope the secondment of an academic behavioural researcher into the Climate Behaviours team.
• Co-create theories of change for three priority policy areas, compiling the data into a clear, simple tool that links to data sources monitoring and evaluating impact.
• Develop a ‘Key principles for behavioural evaluations’ document.

The Scottish Government Climate Behaviours Team will take forward the projects proposed in this report.  Roundtable participants will be invited to a follow-up event in spring 2026.

If you require the report in an alternative format, such as a Word document, please contact info@climatexchange.org.uk or 0131 651 4783.

Learn more: ClimateXChange Programme Manager Anne Marte Berseng reflects on the roundtable event in her blog post ‘Making better use of behavioural science in policymaking‘.