Abstract
Australia has been one of the global frontrunners in the development of behaviourally informed regulation. The Australian Security and Investments Commission (ASIC) was the first government organisation in Australia to refer to ‘behavioural insights’ in their 2008 report. Since 2008, the use of behavioural science by Australian regulators has increased dramatically.
Recent examples include:
- the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) explicitly used a behavioural lens when investigating supermarkets’ pricing and promotion practices,
- the NSW Productivity Commission has explicitly called for the use of behaviourally informed and experimental regulation, and;
- the Australian Energy Regulator has a long history of using experiments to identify the best way to communicate with consumers.
However, there is still more that Australian regulators can learn from other countries. For example, the Ontario Securities Commission has a long program of work identifying how it should respond to the challenges of retail investment fraud, especially in the age of AI, and OfCom in the UK has taken a leadership position in using behavioural insights to keep people safer online, including by addressing the use of dark patterns on social media. In this session, we will convene a number of leaders in the behavioural regulation sector and identify where Australia is taking a leadership role and who it should be learning from. Participants will gain an understanding of the behavioural regulation landscape in Australia and direct insight into world-leading practices from Canada and the UK.