Abstract:
Measuring average impacts of public interventions, which is a dominant approach in the evaluation of public programmes has little to offer to inform policy making. For instance, the ultimate goal of innovation policy is about a qualitative change, not the numbers of patents obtained or applied, product or process innovations introduced, employment growth in the supported firms in terms of R&D personnel, etc. Hence, the key concept advanced in this paper is behavioural additionality effect, which takes account of the difference in behaviour of a target population (firms) owing to a public intervention. Objective: The article offers a different perspective on assessing the effects of public interventions, in particular with regard to innovation policy, incorporating the element of persistency of those effects. Research design & methods: Three research questions were formulated: How behavioural additionality is conceptualised in extant literature? What are the major obstacles in assessing behavioural additionality effect of public interventions? And how these problems can be overcome? The considerations are based on literature review and evaluation practice. Findings and Implications: The term ‘behavioural additionality’ suffers from conceptual confusion and terminological ambiguity. Two major hindrances can be identified that impede the behavioural additionality research. The first it is the confusion between the potential and actual behaviour. The second is called ‘project fallacy’ and entails the problem with causal explanation. To remedy these problems – the conceptualisation of behavioural additionality as changes in organisational routines and capabilities are suggested as well as process tracing and contribution analysis that are grounded in generative causality. Contribution/Value added: The article contribution lies in providing a common reference frame for evaluation of behavioural additionality at the firm’s level that incorporates the element of persistency of the changes induced, what is vital from the public policy perspective.
