Different fields, common good? Behavioural science in the public and private sectors
When people think of behavioural science improving lives, they often picture public health campaigns, energy-saving nudges, or government-backed reminders to file your taxes. It’s true, behavioural science has become a mainstay of public sector innovation. However, this narrative, while compelling, is incomplete. Even as the field matures, a quiet tension persists: a sense that the public sector is the “moral” home of behavioural science, while private sector work carries a whiff of compromise.
This tension is more than academic. It shapes career trajectories, funding priorities, and even how we define success in our work. So let’s break it down, not just to compare public vs. private, but to ask more provocative questions:
What do these two worlds reveal about the values embedded in behavioural science itself? Are we underestimating the private sector’s ability to drive public good?
And could deeper cross-pollination between the two make us better, smarter, and more ethical practitioners?
Public sector impact is shaped as much by politics and optics as by purpose
In public institutions, behavioural science is typically tied to explicit mandates for social good: reduce smoking, increase vaccine uptake, promote sustainable transport. The mission is visible and (in theory) politically neutral. The work is often rigorous, tested in field trials, and open to scrutiny. So far, so noble.
But public work isn’t without its constraints. Often, political timelines dictate what gets done and how fast. Projects that fit a government’s priorities are greenlit; those that challenge the status quo are quietly shelved. There’s also the optics game - public-sector teams are rarely free to experiment too boldly as missteps are PR risks, not just learning opportunities. So while the work may aim for long-term impact, it's often shaped by short-term pressures.
Moreover, public sector interventions are sometimes limited in depth. Messaging campaigns and small-scale nudges can only go so far in solving systemic issues like poverty or structural inequality. There’s a growing realisation that while behavioural tweaks are helpful, they need to be married and intertwined with bigger policy levers - something not all institutions are ready to do.
The private sector’s ethical reputation obscures its real-world impact
Now let’s look at the private sector, which can be viewed as the supposed capitalist wild west of behavioural science. This is often where the field’s ethical alarm bells ring loudest: Are we just getting better at manipulating consumers? At making people spend more, scroll longer, click faster?
Sometimes, yes. There are real concerns here, particularly when behavioural insights are used to exploit attention, maximise addiction, or obscure the true cost of products. But to reduce all private sector work to manipulation is lazy and misses a large chunk of the picture.
There’s another story unfolding quietly in companies around the world where behavioural science is being used to help people make better financial decisions, avoid debt spirals, and navigate overwhelming digital interfaces. Crucially, private sector teams often get to embed their interventions into products and processes, not just float them in a policy paper. They can test, iterate, and scale at a pace the public sector can only dream of.
Take fintech, for example. Behavioural scientists in this space are helping design savings tools that subtly reduce friction, or nudge users toward healthier defaults. They’re tackling ambiguity in pricing, terms, and onboarding, issues that disproportionately harm vulnerable users. Creating silent, but significant impact.
Ethics isn’t a sector. It’s a system.
One of the most unhelpful assumptions in behavioural science today is that ethics belong to the public sector, and innovation to the private. That kind of binary thinking creates moral outsourcing, where public teams assume virtue by default, and private teams are forever on the defensive.
The truth is ethical practice doesn’t automatically follow from the sector you’re in. It comes from system design, stemming from how decisions are made, what incentives are in place, and how success is measured.
A public campaign with irreproachable intentions but no follow-through may do less good than a private sector tool that quietly helps millions build better habits. Similarly, a slick commercial intervention that increases short-term engagement but erodes autonomy is not ethically sound just because it’s well-executed.
We need a shared standard that focuses not on the logo at the top of your payslip, but on the impact of your work, the transparency of your process, and the degree to which you protect human agency.
The future of behavioural science lies at the intersection of sectors
We’re entering an era where the borders between public and private are becoming increasingly porous. Governments are borrowing private-sector methods and companies are adopting public-sector missions (or at least the language of them). The best behavioural science work increasingly happens at the intersections such as those of regulation and design, civic tech and corporate innovation, private sector product design and public sector goals.
So instead of asking which sector is more virtuous, the better question is: how can behavioural scientists build influence within the structures they operate in? How can they advocate for ethical standards, evaluate impact honestly, and find allies who will push for good regardless of sector?
