Social policy articles from across Nature Portfolio

Effective government partly depends on effective communications to citizens. Over six studies in three different policy contexts, Linos et al. identify a counter-intuitive formality effect: citizens are more likely to respond to formal government communications than informal ones.

For the partnership between policy and academia to be a fruitful one, it is important that expectations on both sides are clear. In this World View, Ammaarah Martinus shares her experiences from working in government for over a decade.

Public health policies can have implications beyond their intended outcomes. A causal-loop diagram for sugar-sweetened beverage taxes was developed using a systems-thinking approach, emphasizing the trajectory of different outcomes over time.

Zero-COVID-19 strategies used hard lockdown to save human lives. Our study used modern policy evaluation tools and high-quality longitudinal, nationally representative data and found that the lives saved during Melbourne’s hard 111-day lockdown came at a high cost to parents of young dependent children, and in particular mothers, as the lockdown continued.

Low-income solar adopters are more likely to refer others to a fully subsidized solar programme when referral rewards are combined with an appeal to reciprocity and a simplified referral process, leading to five times as many solar contracts as when referral rewards are used alone. The findings highlight behavioural science strategies that administrators of low-income energy assistance programmes can use to cost-effectively accelerate programme uptake.