Restricting Choices: Decision Making, the Market Society, and the Forgotten Entrepreneur

Wolcott, Gregory

doi:10.1007/s10551-017-3560-0

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This critique is applied to libertarian paternalist nudges, of which it is argued that they are even more prone to abuse than traditional paternalist policies as they operate covertly, making it harder to detect abusive practices (Hausman and Welch, 2010). Several authors mention worries concerning public officials misusing the power of nudges, see Thaler and Sunstein (2008), Blumenthal-Barby (2010), andWolcott (2019).The fear is that public officials and politicians could employ nudges to organize the support they need for political goals (Calo, 2014). Worse still, Schubert (2017b) argues that policy makers have a long-term interest in aggravating thinking biases in the population as policy makers have an interest in a docile and following citizenship.…”

Section: Abuse and Public Choice Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging

Kuyer

Gordijn

2023

Rationality and Society

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In this article, we systematically review the literature on the ethics of nudging. Since the publication of the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in 2008, a rich literature has been developed on the question whether it is ethical to nudge people. This is an important area for research as nudges are commonly used by governments and private corporations to alter the behaviour of citizens and consumers. In order to gain a complete overview of this literature, we conduct a systematic search of academic sources. We investigate which ethical issues with nudging are discussed. We find four major ethical issues, namely worries regarding 1) autonomy, 2) welfare, 3) long-term adverse effects, and 4) democracy and deliberation. We discuss each ethical issue by highlighting how it is defined, what the critique constitutes, what its sub-issues are, and which defences of nudging have been argued for. In this way, the systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of the literature on the ethics of nudging to date. The results of our systematic review contribute to a better understanding of the ethical issues with nudging, as well as of the current state of the literature on these topics.

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Section: Abuse and Public Choice Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging

Kuyer

Gordijn

2023

Rationality and Society

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“…While acts of decision-making in an environment of growing choices increase the potential to achieve objectively better, i.e., higher quality, more useful, or more advantageous outcomes, they often instead paradoxically awaken feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, internal tension, disappointment, remorse, or regret [33,34]. The thesis of a relationship between the escalation of the range of options, the growth of demands for continuous decision-making, and the increasing level of consumer dissatisfaction is also considered at a more general level by other authors [35][36][37].…”

Section: The Ambivalence Of Freedom Of Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer Culture and Abundance of Choices: Having More, Feeling Blue

Roubal¹

2023

Business, Management and Economics

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The defining feature of contemporary consumer culture is the escalation of consumption opportunities and the expanding space for choice. An unbridled and unrestricted range of products is part of material prosperity, rising living standards, and emancipation of human freedoms. The growing demands for constant consumer decision-making in an increasingly opaque environment of potential targets of choice exposes consumers to the risk of procrastination, passivity, and resignation, as well as psychological discomfort. The goal here is to contribute to theories of consumer behavior in the context of the psychological experience of choice under the conditions of the accelerated quantity of consumption volumes against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. While conventional offline shopping was drastically curtailed during the coronavirus crisis, freedom of consumer choice was maintained despite many proclamations to the contrary. I seek to provide support to the claim that freedom of consumer choice was maintained and often amplified during the pandemic in the online virtual environment of digital commerce formats. Freedom of consumer choice has merely been transformed into a horizontal level of application by the relatively rapid and fluid conversion of market activities into the cyberspace of a growing number of e-stores and online supermarkets, unconstrained by the physical space of shelves and counters.

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Let the Chips Fall! Public Nudging Arrangements, Coercion, and the Role of Independent Shopkeepers

Häyry

Ahola-Launonen

Takala

2023

Soc

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Nudging, according to its inventors and defenders, is supposed to provide a non-coercive way of changing human behavior for the better—a freedom-respecting form of “libertarian paternalism.” Its original point was to complement coercive modes of influence without any need of justification in liberal frameworks. This article shows, using the example of food-product placement in grocery stores, how this image is deceptive. Although nudging practices may not restrict the freedom of consumers, nudging arrangements by public health authorities do restrict the freedom of shopkeepers in standard liberal senses. Libertarianism cannot justify this coercion, and the creed is best left out of the equation as the ideological ruse that it, in this discussion, is. Other liberal theories can justify the coercion, but on grounds that can also be applied to other methods of public health promotion by subsidies and regulation. This result reaffirms that nudging should be seen to complement, not to replace, those other methods.

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Restricting Choices: Decision Making, the Market Society, and the Forgotten Entrepreneur

Cited by 3 publications

References 33 publications

Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging

Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging

Consumer Culture and Abundance of Choices: Having More, Feeling Blue

Let the Chips Fall! Public Nudging Arrangements, Coercion, and the Role of Independent Shopkeepers

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