Using Behavioral Economics to Inform Behavior Analyst Regulation Fees in Ontario
Ontario BCBAs walk away when yearly fees top $625, so regulators can now price with data, not guesswork.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The researchers asked Ontario BCBAs how much they would pay for a yearly regulatory fee.
They used a purchase-task survey, the same tool used to study how people buy cigarettes or tanning sessions.
Each BCBA saw rising fee prices and clicked the highest price they would still pay.
What they found
The average drop-off point was about $625.
Above that price, many BCBAs said they would let their license lapse or move to another province.
This gives regulators a clear ceiling before they lose practitioners.
How this fits with other research
Thomson et al. (2025) tell the back-story: Ontario needed 25 years of volunteer work to win regulation.
Malkin et al. now give the next step—data on what fee keeps those new rules alive.
Reed et al. (2016) used the same purchase-task method to spot tanning addiction; here it spots fee tolerance, showing the tool travels across very different topics.
Kaplan et al. (2025) offer shinybeez, a free web app that can crunch these fee numbers in minutes.
Why it matters
If you sit on a provincial board or advise one, you now have a number to bring to the fee-debate table.
Set the annual fee under $625 and you keep most BCBAs; go above it and you risk an exodus.
Share the graph with treasury staff so dollars-and-cents talks don’t drown out practitioner voices.
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Join Free →Pull the fee schedule for your province and compare it to the $625 line; flag any planned increase that crosses it.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study applied behavioral economic methods to assess the effects of regulatory cost on demand for the opportunity to practice behavior analysis in Ontario using a hypothetical purchase task. The provincial government of Ontario recently passed legislation to expand the psychology regulatory body to include behavior analysts. Professional regulation has been a key longstanding priority for many professionals in the province and the Ontario Association for Behaviour Analysis (ONTABA, 2021) alike. This is an important step in public protection policy, the professionalization of the practice of applied behavior analysis (ABA), and standards of practice in the province. This study aimed to inform part of the process using an operant demand framework because fees are required to operate regulatory bodies, which implies that professionals interested in becoming regulated health professionals must pay initial and ongoing fees. Demand was analyzed using the exponentiated model of demand. Participants included 60 practitioners, who indicated they were board certified behavior analysts and Ontario residents. The findings indicated that participants’ mean Pmax value (the price at which consumption becomes elastic) was $624.65 at the aggregate level. These results may indicate Ontario behavior analysts’ perceptions of the acceptability of varying costs associated with regulation. Further, the study demonstrates the applied utility of behavioral economic methods to assess demand for commodities within behavior analysis. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40617-023-00886-x.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2025 · doi:10.1007/s40617-023-00886-x