Behavioral science has delivered measurable gains across development domains, yet the evidence base for international development remains thin and uneven. This article argues that the problem is not that behavioral tools don’t work but that the field has consistently asked the wrong questions, in the wrong ways, and in the wrong institutional conditions.
We identify three compounding failures. First, foundational behavioral assumptions are built on narrow, “WEIRD” samples, and development settings are treated as test beds for existing frameworks rather than sources of new theory. Second, research methods are poorly suited to development realities: excluding key populations, underestimating delivery volatility, and producing findings distorted by measurement problems. Third, the institutional conditions for generating, uncovering, and learning from behavioral evidence are frequently absent. For each failure, we propose a research agenda. The Global Behavioral Evidence Network for Development (GBEND) has been founded to coordinate action across all three domains.
Authors
- Rasha Attar
- Deelan Maru
- Zeina Afif
- David Halpern
- Chiara Cappellini
- Alain Samson (editor)
