Ethical Guidelines for the Construction of Digital Nudges

Abstract

Under certain circumstances, humans tend to behave in irrational ways, leading to situations in which they make undesirable choices. The concept of digital nudging addresses these limitations of bounded rationality by establishing a libertarian paternalist alternative to nudge users in virtual environments towards their own preferential choices. Thereby, choice architectures are designed to address biases and heuristics involved in cognitive thinking. As research on digital nudging has become increasingly popular in the Information Systems community, an increasing necessity for ethical guidelines has emerged around this concept to safeguard its legitimization in distinction to e.g. persuasion or manipulation. However, reflecting on ethical debates regarding digital nudging in academia, we find that current conceptualizations are scare. This is where on the basis of existing literature, we provide a conceptualization of ethical guidelines for the design of digital nudges, and thereby aim to ensure the applicability of nudging mechanisms in virtual environments.The paper is structured as follows: in section 2, we will provide the background and basic understandings of the nudging concept by emphasizing on ethical

Empowering Consumers to Make Environmentally Sustainable Online Shopping Decisions: A Digital Nudging Approach

“…In fact, digital nudges can also be instrumentalized to change consumers' decisions to be in line with the nudging institution's best interest (e.g., [39,49]). This is one of the key reasons why an ongoing scholarly debate has questioned the ethics of nudging [20,19,22]. As potential ethical issues undermine the notion of consumer-centricity and empowerment, it is important to investigate them and to identify potential measures to overcome them.…”

“…Prior research has extensively elaborated on the ethical underpinnings of nudges in general [21,37,22,50] and digital nudges in particular [19,20,51,11]. Among the most commonly raised ethical issues of (digital) nudges is the concern that nudges manipulate people's behavior by exploiting cognitive biases and, thus, the decisions encouraged by the nudge are not necessarily in the nudged person's best interest but rather reflect the nudging agent's tactics [50].…”

“…While prior research indicates promising results regarding the effectiveness of (digital) nudges for behavior change [15], critical voices have pointed out possible ethical issues arising with their implementation, such as paternalism or consumer manipulation [19,20,21,22].…”

Measuring Automated Influence: Between Empirical Evidence and Ethical Values

“…Similar worries have been raised about recommender systems [12,60]. Ensuring that nudges are "transparent"-i.e., people understand that they are being nudged and toward what ends-can, to some extent, mitigate these concerns [35,59]. But given our reliance on recommender systems, and the increasing sophistication of many digital nudges, concerns about their effects on individual autonomy are likely to grow.…”

Understanding the Impact of Sustainability and CSR Information in D2C Online Shops on Consumer Attitudes and Behavior – A Literature Review

“…Nudging theory develops this idea further and suggests that consumer behavior can be altered in a predictable way through nudges, which are essentially modifications in the choice architecture that do not entail forbidding any options or significantly changing the economic incentives of the decision-maker [27]. In a digital context, a nudge is "a subtle form of using design, information and interaction elements to guide user behavior in digital environments, without restricting the individual's freedom of choice" [28]. This raises the question to what extent and in which presentation forms S/CSR information could be regarded as a nudge and which nudging techniques could be used to amplify its effectiveness in prompting sustainable consumption choices.…”