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‘Better off, as judged by themselves’: do people support nudges as a method to change their own behavior?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

NATALIE GOLD Open the ORCID record for NATALIE GOLD [Opens in a new window] ,
YILING LIN ,
RICHARD ASHCROFT  and
MAGDA OSMAN
NATALIE GOLD
Affiliation:
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
YILING LIN
Affiliation:
Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
RICHARD ASHCROFT
Affiliation:
City Law School, City, University of London, London, UK
MAGDA OSMAN*
Affiliation:
Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
*
*Correspondence to: Magda Osman, Reader in Experimental Psychology, Head of Centre for Mind in Society (LSI), Turing Research Fellow, Research Fellow to the Government, Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. E-mail: m.osman@qmul.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this study, we investigated how people evaluate behavioral interventions (BIs) that are targeted at themselves, aiming to promote their own health and wellbeing. We compared the impact on people's assessments of the acceptability of using BIs to change their own behavior of: the transparency of the BI (transparent or opaque); the designer of the BI (researchers, government policy-makers, advertisers); and three types of arguments regarding their efficacy (positive, positive + negative, negative). Our target BIs were actual interventions that have been used in a range of policy domains (diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking, personal finances). We found that transparent BIs were considered more acceptable than opaque BIs. On average, all BIs were considered acceptable for changing participants’ own behavior, except for the opaque BI in the finance context; there was differential acceptability of BIs across contexts, with finance clearly least acceptable. However, the perceived effectiveness of the BIs was at least as influential a predictor of acceptability ratings as the ease of identification of the behavior change mechanism across the five contexts. Furthermore, effectiveness was partially mediated by desire to change, suggesting that people do think BIs make them better off, ‘as judged by themselves’.

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Type
Article
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Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 25 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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