Nudge for Good? Choice Defaults and Spillover Effects

Abstract

Policy makers increasingly use choice defaults to promote "good" causes by influencing socially relevant decisions in desirable ways, e.g., to increase pro-environmental choices or pro-social behavior in general. Such default nudges are remarkably successful when judged by their effects on the targeted behaviors in isolation. However, there is scant knowledge about possible spillover effects of pro-social behavior that was induced by defaults on subsequent related choices. Behavioral spillover effects could eliminate or even reverse the initially positive effects of choice defaults, and it is thus important to study their significance. We report results from a laboratory experiment exploring the subsequent behavioral consequences of pro-social choice defaults. Our results are promising: Pro-social behavior induced by choice defaults does not result in adverse spillover effects on later, subsequent behavior. This finding holds for both weak and strong choice defaults.

On the Use of Nudges to Affect Spillovers in Environmental Behaviors

“…Academics and policymakers have tested a variety of instruments to induce people to behave more environmentally, ranging from traditional policy tools, like incentives and regulation, to softer behavioral interventions, like information provision and nudging. Evaluation of these policies must crucially keep into account not only their direct impact, but also their spillover effects on other pro-environmental behaviors (Truelove et al, 2014; Dolan and Galizzi, 2015; d’Adda et al, 2017; Ghesla et al, 2018; Schmitz, 2018). The overall impact of environmental policies will be positive only in so far that any direct effect, that they may have, will not be offset by compensating behaviors, either in other domains or for the same activity over time.…”

Options to design more ethical and still successful default nudges: a review and recommendations

“…Costly opt-outs (1) are limited to four studies in this review (Brune et al, 2017;Loeb et al, 2018;Briscese, 2019;Ghesla et al, 2019). In field experiments, individuals had to log in to a web account to find and change a financial decision (Briscese, 2019) or parents had to call to deselect a lunch menu for their kids (Loeb et al, 2018).…”

“…Both report large effects from 5 to 78 and from 0% to 98%. Only a lab experiment allows for a 1 to 1 comparison between a default costly in one and costless in a different treatment (Ghesla et al, 2019). Individuals had to solve small puzzles to deselect a preselected donation amount.…”

Use of the Electronic Health Record to Optimize Antimicrobial Prescribing

“…Making simple alterations to default ordering options for laboratory tests can reduce this unnecessary initiation of empiric therapy. 10 For example, in one study, by simply changing the default urine testing option "urinalysis with reflex to culture" to "urinalysis with reflex to microscopy," orders for urine cultures by emergency department physicians decreased by 46.6%. 11…”