Research projects

We've worked on hundreds of projects to address some of the world's most pressing social, environmental and organisational problems.

Featured projects

Major projects

Our major projects showcase programs that utilise the entire BehaviourWorks Method and demonstrate the potential of accomplishing transformative change for our societies.

VMIA Health Trials

Victorians enjoy a world-class public healthcare system with state-of-the-art facilities and highly trained staff who put care and compassion at the centre of everything they do. But in a complex health system where so many decisions are made under pressure, things sometimes go wrong.

Scale up

When we know that a behaviour change intervention has worked in a pilot or trial, how can we scale it up to achieve greater impact and reach?

COVID-19 Scrub study

BehaviourWorks leads the Australian chapter of the Survey of COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB) study, a real-time survey tracking how groups of people all over the world are responding to health messages – and changing their behaviour - in response to the pandemic.

Waste collaboration

This page shares the results of a research collaboration led by BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) and its partners to explore and better understand how behavioural insights can be used to encourage households, businesses and the whole Australian community to avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle waste and improve the livability and sustainability of our cities and regions.

Featured projects

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Survey of skills gaps in med tech and pharma

Australia’s ‘Med Tech and Pharma’ (MTP) sector is a dynamic and critically important part of our economy, employing around 70,000* highly skilled workers across medical technology, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and digital health. The skills of MTP workers are valued around the world and organisations in the sector invest heavily in professional development and training. However, like most sectors, skills gaps remain. While many of these are well known, MTPConnect – the not-for-profit Industry Growth Centre aiming to establish Australia as an Asia-Pacific hub for MTP companies – wants to ensure the sector is positioned for an even more dynamic future, engaging BehaviourWorks Australia to conduct a formal analysis of skills and capacity.

Melbourne Water - New Ways of Working

Victoria’s stringent COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 forced dramatic changes to daily patterns and workplaces. Large organisations had to deal with teams working from home and scrambling to remain productive.

A look at food waste from inside the family home

Food waste is estimated to cost the Australian community over $20 billion a year, with more than five million tonnes of food ending up in landfill. This has major environmental impacts. Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, OzHarvest, is working hard to address the issue, rescuing around 180 tonnes of food every week from 3,000 food donors, including supermarkets, restaurants and other food outlets. While OzHarvest is doing a remarkable job, it wants to do more to prevent food waste, primarily by reducing food waste in the home.

Growing agriculture’s energy future

Victorian farmers, like farmers everywhere, aim to maximise their outputs by being efficient with their inputs. Energy is key to this, and to help farmers stay resilient, productive and adaptable, the Victorian Government has developed the Agriculture Energy Investment Plan (AEIP) that works to assist and engage with the agricultural industry to improve production, investment, skills and promote new energy technologies developments.

The village raises the child

If you knew a family was struggling, would you babysit for them? Cook a meal maybe?

National Typology and Measurement Priorities for Waste Prevention in Australia

'Waste prevention' is an essential means for the current waste infrastructure to cope with existing and anticipated future demands, but Australia has no direct or primary measurement of waste generation or avoidance.

Reducing Food Waste in Households

One Australian organisation committed to tackling food waste is OzHarvest, who wanted to develop an impactful campaign to inspire citizen action.

The village raises the child

If you knew a family was struggling, would you babysit for them? Cook a meal maybe?

Growing agriculture’s energy future

Victorian farmers, like farmers everywhere, aim to maximise their outputs by being efficient with their inputs. Energy is key to this, and to help farmers stay resilient, productive and adaptable, the Victorian Government has developed the Agriculture Energy Investment Plan (AEIP) that works to assist and engage with the agricultural industry to improve production, investment, skills and promote new energy technologies developments.

Melbourne Water - New Ways of Working

Victoria’s stringent COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 forced dramatic changes to daily patterns and workplaces. Large organisations had to deal with teams working from home and scrambling to remain productive.

Survey of skills gaps in med tech and pharma

Australia’s ‘Med Tech and Pharma’ (MTP) sector is a dynamic and critically important part of our economy, employing around 70,000* highly skilled workers across medical technology, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and digital health. The skills of MTP workers are valued around the world and organisations in the sector invest heavily in professional development and training. However, like most sectors, skills gaps remain. While many of these are well known, MTPConnect – the not-for-profit Industry Growth Centre aiming to establish Australia as an Asia-Pacific hub for MTP companies – wants to ensure the sector is positioned for an even more dynamic future, engaging BehaviourWorks Australia to conduct a formal analysis of skills and capacity.

Behaviour change Scale Up Toolkit

When we know that a behaviour change intervention has worked in a pilot or trial, how can we scale it up to achieve greater impact and reach?

Biodiversity protection and farm production co-existing on private land

Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority (GHCMA) and the Beyond Bolac Catchment Action Group (BBCAG) want to improve their engagement with farmers on wetland protection in south-west Victoria.

AustralianSuper Monash University Retirement Confidence Index Wave 4

With many of us now expected to live well into our eighties, retirement is becoming a longer and more meaningful phase of life. The better informed and prepared an individual is about retirement as the next life stage, the more confident and better able he/she will be to adjust to it. Furthermore, those who have prepared for retirement and feel ready to make the transition are more likely to exit the workforce at an earlier age.

Using a Hackathon to prioritise COVID-19 testing: An emergency response

Governments, health and other organisations are working around the clock to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. The wider community is also dealing with the reintroduction of restrictions and reacting in ways that are not always helpful, such as stockpiling essentials, not social distancing and sharing misleading information.

Can we teach our kids to value nature and act for wildlife?

Zoos Victoria’s (ZV) Fighting Extinction Schools (FES) Program is designed to engage Victorian schools, teachers and students in creating wildlife-friendly communities that not only value nature and biodiversity but are willing to do something about it by fighting extinction.

Transport Network Pricing Forum

Victoria’s rapid population growth over the past decade has led to a transport network struggling to meet demand, with congested roads and crowded public transport. This is expected to worsen in future, leading to increased and unpredictable travel times.

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