Criticisms of nudging suggest that nudges infringe on decision makers’ autonomy. Yet, little empirical research has explored whether people who are subjected to nudges agree. In three between-group experiments (N = 2083), we subject participants to contrasting choice architectures and measure experiences of autonomy, choice-satisfaction, perceived threat to freedom of choice, and objection to the choice architecture. Participants who received a prosocial opt-out default nudge made more prosocial choices but did not report lower autonomy or choice satisfaction than participants in opt-in default or active-choice conditions. This was the case even when the presence of the nudge was disclosed, and when monetary choice stakes were introduced. With monetary choice stakes, participants perceived the threat to freedom of choice as slightly higher in the nudge condition than in the other conditions, but objection to the choice architecture did not differ between the conditions. Taken together, our results suggest that default nudges are less manipulative and autonomy-infringing than sometimes feared. We recommend that policymakers include measures of choice experiences when testing out new interventions.
To avoid concerns of manipulation, nudges should be transparent to the people affected by the intervention. Whether increasing the transparency of a nudge also leads to more favorable perceptions of the nudge is however not certain, and may depend on the circumstances of the evaluation. Across three preregistered experiments (N = 1915), we study how increased transparency affects the perceived fairness of a default nudge, in joint vs. separate, and description- vs. experience-based evaluations. We find that transparency increases perceived fairness of the nudge in a joint comparison, when the relative benefits of transparency are easy to see. However, in a real choice-context, with nothing to compare against, transparency instead decreases perceived fairness. Efforts to make nudges more ethical may thus ironically make choice architects perceived as less ethical. Additionally, we find that the transparent default nudge still successfully affects behavior, that different default-settings communicate different perceived intentions of the choice architect, and that participants consistently favor opt-in defaults over opt-out defaults nudges – regardless of their level of transparency.
Critiques of nudging suggest that nudges infringe on decision makers’ autonomy. Yet, little empirical research has explored whether people who are subjected to nudges agree. In three online between-group experiments (N = 2083), we subject participants to different choice architectures and measure their experiences of autonomy, choice-satisfaction, perceived threat to freedom of choice, and objection to the choice architecture. Participants who received an opt-out nudge made more prosocial choices but did not report more negative choice experiences compared to participants in opt-in default or active choice conditions. This was predominantly the case even when the presence of the nudge was made transparent to participants, and when choice stakes were increased. Our results suggest that defaults are less manipulative and autonomy-infringing than sometimes feared. Policy-makers should include measures of choice experiences when testing out new nudges.
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