The influence of nudge transparency on the experience of autonomy

Abstract

While nudges have been shown to be effective and are already being implemented, there is still a debate on the ethics of nudging. This debate specifically refers to the potential of nudges negatively affecting autonomy. It has been suggested that making a nudge transparent may resolve this issue. Whereas previous research has already demonstrated that transparency does not violate nudge effectiveness, it is unknown how transparency affects autonomy and related decision satisfaction and experienced pressure. In an online study with 905 participants, we investigated whether two variations of transparency influence the decision maker's experience of autonomy, as well as their choice satisfaction and the experienced pressure to choose the nudged option. The results show that autonomy and satisfaction were high-and pressure low-across all conditions, and were therefore not influenced by transparency. Suggesting that nudges do not negatively affect autonomy and that transparency does also not increase it.

Are Default Nudges Deemed Fairer When They Are More Transparent? People's Judgments Depend on the Circumstances of the Evaluation

“…Regardless of being disclosed or not, participants in the nudge conditions were about twice as likely to donate their bonus endowment to charity compared to participants in the opt-in default condition. This finding supports the general conclusion of previous studies on disclosing default nudges, that increased transparency has no, or a very small, diminishing effect on behavior (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Michaelsen, et al, 2020;Steffel et al, 2016;Wachner et al, 2020). Study 3 contributes to this literature by evidencing the same finding using demonstrably attentive participants, in a high-powered experiment, and with a monetary choice.…”

“…Apart from perceptions of fairness, we also look at how transparency affects participants' choice of whether or not to donate. In an equivalence test, we formally test whether the effect on choice can be considered statistically negligible, as suggested by previous research (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Michaelsen, et al, 2020;Steffel et al, 2016;Wachner et al, 2020). The preregistration of this study, along with analysis code, stimulus material and data can be found through https://osf.io/fa9xv.…”

“…Interestingly from an ethical viewpoint, transparency has been increased to make the nudge easily detectable in the moment of exerting influence, by presenting a disclosure statement explaining the nudge to participants in conjunction with them making their decision. Even such immediate nudge disclosures have been shown to have a very small, or no, diminishing effect on the effectiveness of the nudge (Bruns et al, 2018;Loewenstein et al, 2015;Steffel et al, 2016;Paunov, Wänke & Vogel, 2019;Wachner, Adriaanse & De Ridder, 2020).…”

“…Increasing the transparency of a nudge also seems to have no or negligible negative effects on people's experiences and perceptions of the nudge. For instance, experience-based studies have found that making a default nudge transparent entailed no or minor increase in perceived threat to freedom of choice (Michaelsen et al, 2020) and experienced autonomy (Michaelsen et al, 2020;Wachner et al, 2020). Paunov et al (2019) further showed that making a default nudge transparent can lead to lower feelings of being deceived.…”

Experiencing default nudges: autonomy, manipulation, and choice-satisfaction as judged by people themselves

“…Other studies have investigated how increasing the transparency of a nudge affects how it is perceived, or have compared the nudge with other types of interventions. These studies show that the level of transparency of a default nudge may not affect experiences of autonomy or choice-satisfaction (Wachner et al, 2020), or affect perceptions of threat to freedom of choice (Bruns et al, 2018). Compared with a mere recommendation of the same course of action, however, a default nudge has been found to be subjectively more freedom-threatening (but also less so than a mandate; Bruns & Perino, 2019).…”