Approaches and Instruments in Health Promotion and the Prevention of Diseases

Abstract

Policy instruments do not only express how policymakers expect citizens or corporate actors to behave. The implementation of policy instruments also affects citizens and corporate actors directly and indirectly. The chapter brings together public health discourse, concepts and insights from political science on policy instruments. It enhances the instrument typology in order to understand the influence of behavioural insights on policy instruments. The chapter explains how ``classical'' instruments can be informed by behavioural science and under which circumstances behavioural insights offer a chance to change both the social environment and the individual behaviour that occurs in that environment, by focusing on building a choice architecture that promotes healthier behaviours.