Preventing children’s death by heatstroke: How alternative accident theories affect policy design and evaluation

When public policies are designed from scratch, with no or limited possibility of learning from past experience, decision makers rely on their creativity and lateral thinking to counterbalance cognitive biases. One of the crucial issues for both evaluators and policy makers in such situations is not only to elaborate a sound theory of the programme but also to be aware of the existence of competing theories to solve the same problem. Being able to detect such theories constitutes an essential step to avoid ‘Type III errors’, that is, enacting the right solution for the ‘wrong’ problem. Reflecting on the analysis of two programmes aimed at preventing the death of children by heatstroke, this article illustrates the implications of alternative ‘accident theories’ for the evaluation of safety policies.