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There is widespread non‐understanding of the nature, possibilities and limitations of behavioural science among managements and trade unions. There is also considerable misunderstanding — indeed suspicion — between the three parties to behavioural‐science‐in‐industry contracts — the behavioural scientist, the manager and the trade unionist — about the motives for conducting studies and the methods of managing both scientific work in progress and the implementation of results. This lack of clarity among industrialists, incidentally, is by no means only their fault; their confidence has been known to be tricked by behavioural scientists who, for instance, make excessive claims for their product or transgress agreements by failing to provide expected feedback or infringing the principle of confidentiality.

This commentary argues that social marketing and the application of behavioural sciences to policy constitute two converging paths towards better policies. It highlights points of convergence and divergence between both disciplines and the potential benefits of further embedding social marketing principles and methods within the recent trend of applying behavioural sciences to policy.

The commentary relies on a review of the behavioural sciences and social marketing literatures and on an analysis of institutional reports reviewing cases of behaviourally informed policies.

Behavioural sciences are increasingly informing policies to promote societal well-being. Social marketing has seldom been explicitly considered as being part of this phenomenon, although it is de facto. Both disciplines share similar end-goals, inform similar policy applications and are rooted in behavioural analysis. They diverge in their theoretical frameworks, their relative emphasis on behaviour change and the span of interventions they generate. Several benefits of embedding social marketing principles and methods within the current way of applying behavioural sciences to policy are identified.

Scholars applying behavioural sciences to policy are encouraged, when appropriate, to use the insights and methods from social marketing. Social marketing can engage in a dialogue with behavioural sciences to explore how to pilot the convergence of both approaches in practice.

The novelty of this contribution lies in providing the first comparison of the application of behavioural sciences to policy with social marketing, and in using the policy-making cycle framework to map the contributions and complementarities of both disciplines.

This study aims to analyze the basic information of visitors of the Macau Science Center to assess their leisure involvement, satisfaction and behavioral intention, along with the interaction of these factors. Suggestions are made for museum policy modifications to improve visitor experience quality.

The analysis methods used in this study included reliability, descriptive statistics, independent-samples t test, ANOVA, correlation analysis and regression analysis.

The results showed that there was no significant relationship between gender and satisfaction, involvement of leisure or behavioral intention; age and educational level had significant impacts on satisfaction, leisure involvement and behavioral intention; significant differences were found in terms of visitors’ point of geographic origin, namely, local residents, mainland residents and Hong Kong residents; occupation was found to have no significant impact on satisfaction, leisure involvement or behavioral intention; monthly income was found to have no significant impact on leisure involvement and behavioral intention, but did have a significant impact on satisfaction; number of visits had no significant impact; there was no significant difference in leisure involvement and behavioral intention among different types of visitors, but there was a significant difference in terms of satisfaction; and significant correlations were found between leisure involvement and behavioral intentions.

The value of this study is to identify problems and offer potential solutions for the improvement of the Macau Science Center by studying the leisure involvement, satisfaction and behavioral intention of museum visitors. The proposed measures can improve the visibility and quality of the science museum, attract additional visitors and improve Macau’s branding through promoting science education and tourism.

A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design is outlined based on the derivation of a behavioural model of the information seeking patterns of academic social scientists. The information seeking patterns of a variety of academic social scientists were broken down into six characteristics: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. These characteristics constitute the principal generic features of the different individual patterns, and together provide a flexible behavioural model for information retrieval system design. The extent to which these characteristics are available on existing systems is considered, and the requirements for implementing the features on an experimental system are set out.

Looks at the problems and advantages of the application of sociological and social psychological concepts to marketing science. Deals with the problem of selecting relevent concepts from the behavioural sciences, and discusses the explicative power of some of these concepts. Suggests guidelines for the selection of behavioural science ideas, which are both practically and educationally appropriate.

A dictionary definition of management says that it is the “judicious use of means to accomplish an end” (Webster). An alternative definition which may be found in textbooks is that management means the handling of scarce resources so as to maximise utility. Can there be a science dealing with how to handle scarce resources? Economics is also sometimes defined as the science having to do with the handling of scarce resources. Is there then any difference between economics and management? I think there is. Economics derives its normative statements from value systems incorporating economic equilibria (market equilibria). Management, on the other hand, is somehow tied to purposeful decision‐making and actions and the concept is often though not exclusively used about business decision‐making. Management is then seen as the art or science of maximising profits and ensuring efficiency. Even if this is the main pre‐occupation of management researchers and practitioners as evidenced by textbooks and case studies, it does not by any means cover the whole complex area of management. For one thing there are always constraints on behaviour, some of which are so strict that they actually serve as goals in themselves and maximisation of profit is often replaced by criteria for satisficing. It should be noted that management is also used in the sense of “the collective body of those who manage or direct an enterprise” (Webster). This latter definition may explain why management in the first sense is often conceived as relating to the handling of scarce resources in the business firm.

This study aims to identify the origins, mechanisms and outcomes of applying behavioral insight in public policy research.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review to answer three research questions. The authors identified 387 primary studies, dated from January 2000 to April 2021 and coded them through a thematic analysis. Related studies were obtained through searching in Emerald, ScienceDirect, Sage, Springer, Wiley and Routledge.

The results identified eight themes for origins, 16 themes for mechanisms/techniques and 13 outcome-related themes. Through the thematic analysis, the major mechanisms of behavioral approach were found to be social marketing, information provision, social norms, incentives, affect, regulation design, framing, salience, defaults, simplification, networking, environment design, scheduled announcements, commitments, attitude-preference-behavior manifestation and combining behavioral and nonbehavioral mechanisms.

The findings of this review help policymakers to design or redesign policy elements.

This review provides the first systematic exploration of the existing literature on behavioral public policy.

Sports marketing and sponsorship research is located at the intersection of behavioral and design research, which means that it analyzes the current world and shapes a future world. This dual focus poses challenges for formulating and testing theories of sports marketing.

This article develops criteria for categorizing theoretical concepts as either behavioral or formed as different ways of expressing ideas of sports marketing research. It emphasizes the need for clear concept categorization for proper operationalization and applies these criteria to selected theoretical concepts of sports marketing and sponsorship research.

The study defines three criteria to categorize theoretical concepts, namely (1) the guiding idea of research, (2) the role of observed variables, and (3) the relationship among observed variables. Applying these criteria to concepts of sports marketing research manifests the relevance of categorizing theoretical concepts as either behavioral or formed to operationalize concepts correctly.

This study is the first in sports marketing to clearly categorize theoretical concepts as either behavioral or formed, and to formulate guidelines on how to differentiate behavioral concepts from formed concepts.

Expert evidence is a contentious area with a number of high profile cases highlighting unreliable “scientific” expert evidence, leading to appeals and acquittals. The purpose of this paper is to argue for improvement in the assessment of expert evidence reliability to avoid such difficulties.

A review of the area focused on the history of developing legal criteria for admitting “scientific” evidence. It examined the benefits and difficulties of approaches, and proposes an amendment to criteria for increased transparency and evidenced decision making.

The review indicated a range of difficulties with “expert” evidence admissibility, including inconsistency, an over-focus on narrow elements of evidence, difficulties in interpretation, and the potential to unfairly restrict evidence. An alternative to current approaches is proposed. This takes the form of a two-stage approach to consider whether or not to admit expert evidence. It comprises a preparation and an examination stage. The former seeks to critically review the evidence and define its nature. The latter applies two sets of criteria; a Daubert application for generally accepted physical sciences, and proposes an Abridged-Daubert for novel and social/behavioural sciences. Also proposed is increased involvement by experts in critically reviewing their own evidence and in providing statements of limitations.

The paper concludes by outlining the importance of developing such an approach for the UK legal system. It focuses on the application of specific criterion which could assist both Courts and witnesses to evaluate the quality of evidence prior to submission by accounting for the nature of the opinion evidence provided.

The paper outlines a practical approach to examining evidence which has benefit to practitioners and advocates when opinion evidence is outlined.

The aim of this paper is to explore doctoral students' engaging and disengaging experiences among a group of students whose doctoral processes had been prolonged for more than seven years.

The participants were 16 doctoral students in the behavioural sciences. The data were collected with interviews employing a visualisation of their doctoral journeys, and were content analysed qualitatively.

The results suggested that the students described their engagement in doctoral work in terms of dedication, vigour and occasionally absorption. In turn, disengagement was described in terms of insufficiency, cynicism and sometimes exhaustion. Interestingly, the source of engagement was typically a sense of belonging in the scholarly community, whereas the students often reported a lack of autonomy and a lack of belonging as sources for disengagement.

Further longitudinal studies are needed to explore the development of engagement in doctoral work among students from different contexts.

In terms of developing more engaging learning environments, the findings imply that by enhancing students' sense of belonging to their scholarly community and their experiences of autonomy within it their engagement in doctoral work, and further, development as researchers can be fostered.

This study extends the understanding of what may engage or disengage students from their doctoral studies and the essential relationship between the sense of autonomy and that of belonging in doctoral student engagement, in particular in the context of prolonged doctoral studies in the behavioural sciences.