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

Abstract

On the one hand, default nudges are proven to strongly influence behavior. On the other hand, a number of consumer autonomy and welfare concerns have been raised that hinder public policy applications. Both nudge success and ethical concerns depend heavily on the design of defaults. We identify six taxonomic characteristics that matter to the ethical and the nudge success dimension. We review the default nudge literature (N = 61) and review ethical studies to assess both dimensions concerning the taxonomy. When designing a default, a choice architect inevitably makes a decision concerning the characteristics. Among others, the results show three main findings. (1) The initial choice architecture regularly imposes welfare losses and impedes consumer autonomy. Forced active choosing can mitigate both issues. (2) Empirical evidence suggests that transparent defaults are similarly effective as the non-transparent counterparts. (3) The framing of the choice in combination with a choice structuring default leads to greater nudge success and tends to involve the reflective decision-making patterns. Choice architects can trade-off nudge success for legitimacy but a design change may also benefit one without harming the other. We discuss further options of choice architects to legitimize a default.

Public acceptance of default nudges to promote healthy and sustainable food choices

“…However, the opposite can also be true, as observed in the case of the fth nudge concerning donations. If the effectiveness of a nudge hinges on a strong form of implied endorsement, which is often described as a psychological mechanism of defaults [38,24], then people grow particularly wary of effective interventions. A similar result was observed in a cross-country survey in the acceptance of nudges, which noted low acceptance of nudges related to donations, which the authors posit relates to loss aversion: in general, people do not favor default rules that they perceive would take people's money without their explicit consent [43].…”

“…Informing consumers about the default option of a pre-packed grocery cart made a substantial difference to acceptance. Transparency is regularly discussed as a key concept to increase the legitimacy of nudges, as it ensures that consumer autonomy is respected [24] and has been studied as a key driver in nudge acceptance [44]. Although transparency can be perceived as paternalistic by some, it also ts well into a world that demands an increasing number of decisions [45], in which such a nudge can help encourage shoppers inclined towards certain behaviors -such as climate friendly or healthy purchases -to more conveniently and effectively live out those values in their shopping behavior.…”

“…The rst mechanism, which captures the extent to which the public believes the default nudge to be effective at achieving the desired shift in behavior, has been found to be one of the strongest predictors of nutrition policy acceptance in previous studies [25,26], including speci cally for nudges to shift food choices [27,28]. Perceived intrusiveness, or the extent to which people believe the default nudge to limit freedom of choice, is another salient mechanism that has been found to mediate acceptance of a range of nutrition policies [24,26,29]. Finally, this study examines the impact of self-reported engagement in the behavior that is targeted by each nudge, as this has also been found to mediate nutrition policy acceptance [6].…”

“…Given the understanding that nuances in nudge design carry large implications in terms of acceptance, and thereby legitimacy, of nudge adoption [24], this study explores the effect of shifts in the design of nudges on public acceptance. Speci cally, ve nudge scenarios are evaluated, as well as one variation of each nudge in which an element of the nudge design is varied (see Fig.…”

The Implications of Nudging to Encourage Pro-Environmental Behaviour: The Moderating Effects of Biospheric Values and Carbon Footprints

“…These anchor points can be externally influenced, and biases can occur when initial viewpoints are not sufficiently adjusted (Epley & Gilovich, 2006). An example of this in practice would be using default framing to anchor decision-makers to a default (Lemken, 2021;Pichert & Katsikopoulos, 2008). Default framing is the concept of designing a choice scenario to show a particular option as preselected.…”