A Systematic Scoping Review of the Choice Architecture Movement: Toward Understanding When and Why Nudges Work

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a domain-general scoping review of the nudge movement by reviewing 422 choice architecture interventions in 156 empirical studies. We report the distribution of the studies across countries, years, domains, subdomains of applicability, intervention types, and the moderators associated with each intervention category to review the current state of the nudge movement. Furthermore, we highlight certain characteristics of the studies and experimental and reporting practices that can hinder the accumulation of evidence in the field. Specifically, we found that 74% of the studies were mainly motivated to assess the effectiveness of the interventions in one specific setting, while only 24% of the studies focused on the exploration of moderators or underlying processes. We also observed that only 7% of the studies applied power analysis, 2% used guidelines aiming to improve the quality of reporting, no study in our database was preregistered, and the used intervention nomenclatures were non-exhaustive and often have overlapping categories. Building on our current observations and proposed solutions from other fields, we provide directly applicable recommendations for future research to support the evidence accumulation on why and when nudges work.

Choice architecture interventions to change physical activity and sedentary behavior: a systematic review of effects on intention, behavior and health outcomes during and after intervention

“…In our review, we used terms for choice architecture techniques as they are commonly used in the choice architecture literature (e.g. 'default change' and 'anchoring'), because those terms refer to more specific techniques than the techniques from the taxonomy from Michie et al [10,12]. In addition to choice architecture techniques, a wide variety of other BCTs exists [131], such as social support or punishment, but our review did not look at combinations of choice architecture and such other BCTs.…”

“…A promising approach to break individuals' unhealthy habits and promote healthy behavior (e.g. increase physical activity and decrease sedentary behavior) is to make subtle changes to the micro-environment in which individuals make decisions, an approach termed 'choice architecture' or 'nudging' [8][9][10][11][12]. The micro-environment refers to relatively small settings, such as homes and workplaces [13,14].…”

“…In recent decades, choice architecture has gained momentum in the field of public health and health promotion [10,12,25,26]; however, its theoretical principles originate in a long tradition of judgment and decision making research [16,20,27]. Past research has demonstrated that choice architecture interventions can effectively change behavior in a variety of health domains [10]; however, studies on choice architecture in the domain of physical activity and sedentary behavior have received relatively little attention compared to, for example, dietary behavior (e.g.…”

Behavioural Insights and (Un)healthy Dietary Choices: a Review of Current Evidence

“…However, other studies find individual response to specific interventions to depend on several factors, such as preference strength, socio-demographic characteristics, and the current mental and visceral states. Understanding the interplay of these factors with the choice architecture is crucial to create adequately targeted interventions (see Szaszi et al 2018 for a recent review). For instance, interventions based on health priming theoretically rely on (or should be at least amplified by) an existing goal to eat healthier, and the individual needs to know that product A is more in line with achieving this health goal than product B.…”

Nudges that don’t nudge

“…Part of the challenge in identifying the limits of nudging is the lack of information on unsuccessful interventions. A recent systematic review of nudge studies found that just 18% of interventions reported in a set of 116 studies were unsuccessful 5 . The problem is that it's uncertain what this finding means for the state of our knowledge.…”