Organic defaults in online‐shopping: Immediate effects but no spillover to similar choices

Abstract

Changing defaults—the preselection that becomes effective without active choice—is becoming a prominent policy tool, after having been proven to be effective in areas as varied as retirement savings, organ donation and product customization. Yet, little is known about how default effects spill over to subsequent similar behaviors. In an online shopping scenario, we found standard default effects on the share of organically produced products in the overall selection of products. These effects did not spill over to subsequent active shopping choices. This was true for defaults that were hard and easy to change (Exp. 1, N = 90), for immediate and delayed subsequent choices (Exp. 2, N = 106) and for self‐selected defaults (Exp. 3, N = 181). These findings suggest that the reach and scalability of default manipulations in policy making may be limited, but also speak against the possibility for negative spillover.

The psychology of nudging

“…In Study 1, we found that the default nudge had a significant effect on the number of nudged healthy choices in an online supermarket setting. This illustrates that nudges can successfully be implemented in online choice settings, which is in line with current evidence (Antonides & Welvaarts, 2020;Coffino, Udo, & Hormes, 2020;Kuhn et al, 2021). Moreover, we found that goal strivings and autonomous motivation also had a positive main effect on the number of nudged healthy choices.…”

“…That is, across the behavioral domains of healthy eating and sustainability, and thus across pro-self and pro-social nudges, we found that goal strivings and autonomous motivation had a significant main effect on the behavior of interest. This corroborates findings from studies on the role attitudes in nudges' effectiveness (Kaiser et al, 2020;Kuhn et al, 2021;Taube & Vetter, 2019;Vetter & Kutzner, 2016), which have also revealed main effects only on behavioral outcomes. Controlled motivation did not affect our behavioral outcomes in Study 1 and 3, while it significantly predicted sustainable behavior in Study 2, but with negligible predictive power and little practical significance.…”

“…Also, in an online supermarket environment, we show that defaults can successfully be implemented to stimulate the choice for healthier alternatives. This corroborates results from previous studies in online shopping settings and shows that nudges can successfully be implemented in such online environments (e.g., Antonides & Welvaarts, 2020;Coffino, Udo, & Hormes, 2020;Hummel & Maedche, 2019;Kuhn et al, 2021). The frequency of online (food) shopping has tremendously increased over the last years and is expected to increase only further in the coming years (Pitts, Ng, Blitstein, Gustafson, & Niculescu, 2018).…”

“…However, some research has been done to examine the impact of attitudes on nudge effectiveness, mostly in the realm of sustainable behavior (e.g., green electricity uptake or organic food choices). These studies have consistently revealed that default nudges and attitudes independently predict behavioral outcomes (Kaiser, Bernauer, Sunstein, & Reisch, 2020;Kuhn, Ihmels, & Kutzner, 2021;Taube & Vetter, 2019;Vetter & Kutzner, 2016). Thus, current evidence suggests that defaults and attitudes have distinct and independent effects on behavior.…”

“…Thus far, studies focused on related elements like attitudes (Kaiser, Bernauer, Sunstein, & Reisch, 2020;Kuhn, Ihmels, & Kutzner, 2021;Taube & Vetter, 2019;Vetter & Kutzner, 2016) and preferences (Venema, Kroese, Benjamins, & De Ridder, 2020;Venema, Kroese, De Vet, & De Ridder, 2019), but not on motivation itself. Based on Self-Determination Theory , we focused on autonomous and controlled motivation.…”