Table 1. Behavioral models surveyed, and their main advantages and limitations.

Models of behavior surveyed
	Origin sector	Main advantage	Main limitation
Main focus: perceptual drivers
Health Belief Model	Psychology, public health	Very widely used, wealth of data demonstrating that components explain some variance of behavior.	Neglects factors other than beliefs (biases, emotions, habits) and context/environment.
MINDSPACE Checklist	Public policy (interdisciplinary influences)	Concrete, practical checklist of evidence-based techniques to effect change across many sectors.	Focuses almost entirely on unconscious processes and corresponding nudges.
Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction/Reasoned Action Approach/Theory of Reasoned Action	Psychology	Differentiates between different kinds of beliefs.	Context/environment is only accounted for superficially. Does not elaborate on how beliefs are formed; neglects intention–action gap (focus on intention, but intentions do not equal actions) and unconscious processes (e.g. biases).
Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change)	Psychology	Change-as-process over time is unique component.	Evidence for six clearly delineated stages of change is weak.
Health Action Approach	Psychology	Stages of change extended to repeat behaviors.	No recognition of biases or contextual factors.
Self-determination Theory	Psychology	Differentiates between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and names drivers for intrinsic motivation.	Focused on only one aspect of decision-making: ignores all non-motivational individual and systemic factors.
OCEAN model of Personality	Psychology	Trait-based models of personality reliably explain part of the variance in (health) behaviors.	Factors only account for part of an individual’s personality, which in turn only accounts for parts of their behavior. Personality has limited predictive power for a specific behavior, but rather for patterns of behavior.
Theoretical Domains Framework	Psychology	Validated and extensive list of barriers and facilitators.	Biases and personality mostly absent.
COM-B ('capability', 'opportunity', 'motivation' and 'behavior')	Psychology	Emerging from the Theoretical Domains Framework, the first model to link different intervention and policy categories to behavioral drivers in a systematic and parsimonious way.	Limited dimensions of drivers of behavior makes the model easy to understand, but it does not provide much detail.
Fogg Behavior Model	Psychology	Similar to COM-B: behavior is understood as a mixture of motivation, ability, and prompts. Uniquely, strong focus on characteristics of contextual cues that are most effective in shifting behaviors.	Model’s view of motivation and ability is simplistic.
Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory	Behavioral economics	Gives insight into appraisal process of a decision.	Accounts for a small subset of drivers of behavior.
Collection of cognitive biases and heuristics	Behavioral economics, psychology, neuroscience	Insight into ‘automatic’ and unconscious drivers of behavior.	Accounts for only one aspect of decision-making.
Evo-Eco Approach	Evolutionary biology, neuroscience	Evolutionary aspects of behavior and embodiment given due importance (e.g. disgust as a primal emotional reaction).	Views behavior as largely caused by automatic/habitual processes.
Main focus: contextual drivers
Social-Ecological Model	Psychology	Shows the dynamic ways that different strata of the social sphere influence each other.	Does not account for perceptual drivers of behavior.
Social Cognitive Theory	Psychology	Shows how social influence can mediate some perceptual drivers.	Focuses most on self-efficacy, little emphasis on context.
Practice Theory	Sociology, anthropology	Focuses on environmental constraints on behavior.	Neglects individuals, focus on theoretical level rather than testing components’ explanatory value.
Diffusion of Innovations Theory	Communication studies/ sociology	Clear guidance on techniques to reach different segments of a population to adopt a novel behavior.	Segments individuals in a specific way (how receptive they are to an innovation), does not account for other environmental and cognitive factors driving decision-making.