Scotland's wellbeing economy: July 2025

Annex A: Applying wellbeing economy principles into the policy cycle

This Annex provides an example of how different elements of the 4P’s framework could be integrated through a policy cycle to drive progress towards a fair, green, growing wellbeing economy.

Evaluation

• People-powered: engage individuals and communities in the evaluation process to inform understanding of impact in lives.
• Pre-distribution / Prevention: evaluate success based on wellbeing outcomes including in economic prosperity, environmental sustainability and inequality. Also quantify the impact on preventing negative environmental/social outcomes, or further reactive spending, and that resources and opportunities are distributed equally.
• Purpose: regularly review policy and delivery to maintain focus on achieving outcomes and adapt to changing circumstances and evidence.

Agenda setting

• Purpose: set out clearly the intended outcomes and how they contribute to the NPF, aligned with NSET’s vision for a Wellbeing Economy focusing on equality, sustainability and prosperity for current and future generations.
• People-powered: engage with individuals and communities to reflect people’s needs and improve outcomes agenda.

Policy implementation

• Purpose: agree what ‘success’ will look like and identify suitable measures to monitor delivery, including relevant wellbeing indicators and impacts on different groups of people.
• Prevention: utilise proactive measures when implementing policies to avoid the need for further policy intervention in the long-run which can also lead to increased policy resilience.
• People-powered: work with delivery partners and empower communities to have ownership of policies and shape delivery to local economic needs.

Legitimation

• People-powered: meaningful engagement and consultation to build broad public support through ongoing communication with different stakeholders and individuals impacted by the policy.
• Purpose: complete all relevant policy impact assessments, long-term fiscal forecasts, and liaise with other parts of SG to ensure policy coherence.

Policy implementation

• Purpose: agree what ‘success’ will look like and identify suitable measures to monitor delivery, including relevant wellbeing indicators and impacts on different groups of people.
• Prevention: utilise proactive measures when implementing policies to avoid the need for further policy intervention in the long-run which can also lead to increased policy resilience.
• People-powered: work with delivery partners and empower communities to have ownership of policies and shape delivery to local economic needs.

Policy formulation

• Prevention: identify your policy’s connection to root causes of inequality, poverty and climate change and seek to build in actions that will prevent long-term negative outcomes.
• Pre-distribution: explicitly consider how your policy can enable resources and opportunities to be more fairly distributed, particularly for disadvantaged and under-represented groups prior to the need for further government intervention (e.g. transfers and taxes).
• Purpose: working across different government departments to break silos and develop policies that improve wellbeing outcomes.