Trusting Nudges

Toward A Bill of Rights for Nudging

Cass R. Sunstein, Lucia A. Reisch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429837319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Many "nudges" aim to make life simpler, safer, or easier for people to navigate, but what do members of the public really think about these policies? Drawing on surveys from numerous nations around the world, Sunstein and Reisch explore whether citizens approve of nudge policies. Their most important finding is simple and striking. In diverse countries, both democratic and nondemocratic, strong majorities approve of nudges designed to promote health, safety, and environmental protection—and their approval cuts across political divisions.

In recent years, many governments have implemented behaviorally informed policies, focusing on nudges—understood as interventions that preserve freedom of choice, but that also steer people in certain directions. In some circles, nudges have become controversial, with questions raised about whether they amount to forms of manipulation. This fascinating book carefully considers these criticisms and answers important questions. What do citizens actually think about behaviorally informed policies? Do citizens have identifiable principles in mind when they approve or disapprove of the policies? Do citizens of different nations agree with each other?

From the answers to these questions, the authors identify six principles of legitimacy—a "bill of rights" for nudging that build on strong public support for nudging policies around the world, while also recognizing what citizens disapprove of. Their bill of rights is designed to capture citizens' central concerns, reflecting widespread commitments to freedom and welfare that transcend national boundaries.

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Why Public Opinion Maters

The last several years have seen an outpouring of work on behavioral economics, behaviorally informed policies, and “nudges,” understood as interventions that steer people in particular directions but that also allow them to go their own way ¹.A reminder is a nudge (“You have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow”). So is a warning (“Construction area”). A GPS device nudges; a default rule, specifying what happens if people do nothing, nudges. Disclosure of important information (about the risks of smoking or the costs of borrowing) counts as a nudge. Save More Tomorrow plans, allowing employees to sign up to give some portion of their future earnings to pension programs, are nudges.² So are Give More Tomorrow Plans, allowing employees to sign up to give some portion of their future earnings to charities.³ A recommendation is a nudge. A criminal penalty, a civil fine, a tax, and a subsidy are not nudges, because they impose significant material incentives on people’s choices. (To be sure, a very small fee or subsidy might be purely nominal and yet prove effective for behavioral reasons; if so, it might well be fair to characterize it as a nudge.)

In many nations, public officials have been drawn to nudges.⁴ In 2009, the United Kingdom created a Behavioural Insights Team, focused largely on the uses of nudges, and choice architecture, to improve social outcomes; its results have been impressive.⁵ Nudges play a large role in American initiatives in multiple areas, including environmental protection, financial regulation, anti-obesity policies, and education. ⁶In 2014, the United States created its own Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, now called the Office of Evaluation.⁷

With an emphasis on poverty and development, the World Bank devoted its entire 2015 report to behaviorally informed tools, with a particular focus onnudging.⁸ The World Bank has a Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit, focused on poverty and development. Also in 2015, President Barack Obama issued a historic Executive Order on uses of behavioral sciences in federal agencies, calling for attention to the assortment of tools standardly associated with nudging.⁹ The order continues in effect. Behavioral science teams can be found in dozens of countries, including Australia, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Ireland, Germany, and Qatar. And even when formal teams are not in place, departments and ministries—and the offices of presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors—are often using behavioral insights. In fact much of the most important behaviorally informed work comes from departments and ministries, not from dedicated units of any kind.

The reason for the mounting interest should not be obscure. Nations would like to make progress on pressing social problems with tools that actually work and that do not cost a great deal. They would like to save money and lives. They would like to improve education and to reduce poverty. They would like to fuel economic growth. If governments can achieve these goals with instruments that impose minimal burdens and that preserve freedom of choice, they will take those tools extremely seriously. In domains that include savings policy,¹⁰ climate change,¹¹ poverty,¹² and health care,¹³ among many others, behaviorally informed approaches have attracted considerable attention, and often led to concrete reforms.

At the same time, some people have raised serious ethical concerns and objections.¹⁴ An evident question is whether nudges should be counted as unacceptably manipulative or as an interference with freedom, rightly understood.¹⁵ To make progress on the ethical questions, it would be possible to refer to defining commitments of various kinds—involving autonomy, dignity, welfare, and self-government—and to ask whether some, many, or all nudges run afoul of those commitments. It would also be possible to imagine cases in which nudges might have illicit goals, in which case the question would be how to identify the category of goals that count as illicit.

This is a normative task, not an empirical one. But while the normative discussions continue, it is worthwhile to ask some empirical questions. What do people actually think about nudging and choice architecture? Do they have serious ethical objections to official nudges, or to nudges that take the form of law? Or do they believe that nudges are acceptable or desirable, even morally obligatory? Do they distinguish among nudges? What kinds of distinctions do they make?

The answers cannot, of course, dispose of the ethical questions. The issue is how to resolve those questions in principle, and empirical findings about people’s answers are not decisive. Perhaps those answers are confused, insufficiently considered, based on behavioral biases, or otherwise wrong. There is a risk that if people are responding to survey questions, they will not have time or opportunity to reflect, especially if those questions do not offer relevant facts (for example, about the costs and the benefits of the policies in question or the other policy options available). Quick answers to survey questions are not exactly the best way to obtain policy guidance.

Even if their answers are reflective, perhaps people do not value autonomy or dignity highly enough, or perhaps they do not quite know what those concepts mean. Perhaps people pay too little attention to social welfare,¹⁶ or perhaps their judgments about social welfare are off the mark, at least if they are not provided with a great deal of information. We will explore the possibility that different nations, and different groups within the same nation, offer different answers, suggesting an absence of consensus.

Behavioral scientists would emphasize a related point: People’s answers to ethical questions, or questions about moral approval or disapproval, might well depend on how such questions are framed. Slight differences in framing can yield dramatically different answers. Those differences are themselves a nudge; they can have major effects, and they are not easy to avoid.¹⁷

Here is a small example of how ethical judgments can depend on framing.¹⁸ If people are asked whether they think that young people should be valued more than old people, they will usually say, “certainly not!” They will strenuously resist the idea that government should give a higher value to young lives than to old ones. But suppose that people are asked whether they want either (1) to save seventy people under the age of five or (2) to save seventy-five people over the age of eighty. It is reasonable to speculate (and evidence confirms) that most people will choose (1), thus demonstrating that they are willing to value a young person more than an old one.¹⁹ .It would be child’s play to frame nudges so as to elicit one’s preferred answer to ethical questions.

Notwithstanding these points, people’s answers to carefully designed questions are interesting, because they elicit intuitions, potentially revealing patterns of thinking among those who are not required to spend a great deal of time on them. For three different reasons, they can also help to illuminate political, legal, and ethical problems. The first, and the most important, is that in democratic societies (and in nondemocratic societies as well), it is inevitable that public officials will attend to what citizens actually think. If citizens have strong ethical objections, democratic governments will hesitate before proceeding (if only because of electoral self-interest).

Such objections can operate as a kind of presumptive or de facto veto. No public official will entirely disregard a strongly felt moral concern on the part of significant segments of the public. And if people do not have moral objections, and if they welcome nudges as helpful and desirable, public officials will be attentive to their views. Widespread public approval can operate as a license or a permission slip, or perhaps as a spur or a prod.²⁰ Similar points hold in nondemocratic nations, where public officials know that they can learn from what citizens think, and where they are keenly aware that their power might depend on listening to them and considering their concerns.

The second reason is epistemic: People’s judgments provide relevant information about how to think about the ethical issues even if that information is not conclusive. It is not necessary to make strong claims about the “wisdom of crowds,” especially on contested ethical issues, in order to believe that an ethical judgment on the part of those who might be subject to nudges deserves respectful attention. Public officials should be humble and attentive to the views of others, and if strong majorities favor or oppose nudges, their views are entitled to consideration. We do not mean to suggest that public approval or disapproval in a survey setting should dispose of ethical (or other) issues. Reflection, deliberation, expertise, and information greatly matter (see Chapter 9). But public reactions deserve attention.

The third reason involves the commitment to democratic self-government. If that commitment matters, officials should pay attention to what people think, even if they disagree. To be sure, people’s considered judgments might diverge from what emerges from brief surveys. Their considered judgments deserve priority. And if public officials have a clear sense that an approach or a nudge would reduce social welfare, there is a strong argument that they should not adopt that approach or nudge even if people would like them to do so—just as there is a strong argument that they should adopt an approach that increases social welfare even if people oppose it. Individual rights and private autonomy also have their claims, whatever majorities may think. We shall explore these points in Chapter 9. But when public officials are uncertain about whether an approach is desirable, it is reasonable, in the name of self-government, for them to give consideration to the views of members of the public.

As we shall see, current research in many nations supports a single conclusion: At least in general, the majority of citizens of most nations have no views, either positive or negative, about nudging in general; their assessment turns on whether they approve of the purposes and effects of particular nudges. As we shall see, strong majorities in diverse nations tend to be supportive of nudges of the kind that have been seriously proposed, or acted on, by actual institutions in recent years.

With some qualifications, this enthusiasm extends across standard partisan lines; perhaps surprisingly, it unifies people with diverse political convictions. So long as people believe that the goal is both legitimate and important, they are likely to favor nudges in its direction. When there is disagreement, it is usually because of differences about the legitimacy and the importance of the goal of the particular nudge. This is an important finding, because it suggests that most people do not share the concern that nudges, as such, should be taken as manipulative or as an objectionable interference with autonomy. Some preliminary evidence suggests that people are far more negative about mandates and bans, even when they are taken to have perfectly legitimate ends; many people do care about freedom of choice as such, and they will reject many well-motivated policies that do not allow for it.

To summarize the story that we shall tell here: People are most likely to oppose those nudges that (1) promote what they see as illicit goals or (2) are perceived as inconsistent with either the interests or values of most choosers. A more particular finding, one that counts against some default rules, is that people do not want policymakers to produce economic or other losses by using people’s inertia or inattention against them. In addition, people tend to prefer nudges that target deliberative processes to ...