Whom Do We Trust on Social Policy Interventions?

Abstract

Social policy interventions, such as nudges (behavioral change techniques), have gained significant traction globally. But what do the public think? Does the type of expert proposing a nudge influence the kinds of evaluations the public make about nudges? Three experiments investigated this by presenting a US (N = 689) and UK sample (N = 978) with descriptions of nudges (genuine and fictitious) proposed by either scientists or the government. Overall, compared to opaque and fictitious nudges, transparent, and genuine nudges were judged more ethical and plausible, and scientists proposing them were judged more trustworthy than a government working group. Also, trust in fictitious interventions proposed by scientists was higher than in genuine interventions proposed by a government working group.

Trusting nudges? Lessons from an international survey

“…In the past years, several studies have been published on public acceptance of regulatory nudges (Arad and Rubinstein 2018;Bang et al 2018;Branson et al 2012;Bruns et al 2018;Diepeveen et al 2013;Felsen et al 2013;Hagman et al 2015;Jung and Mellers 2016;Junghans et al 2015Junghans et al , 2016Osman et al 2018;Reisch and Sunstein 2016;Sunstein et al 2018;Tannenbaum et al 2017). This literature has explored:…”

“…In the same vein, people have been found to prefer regulatory nudges that target processes of which they are aware (e.g., educational campaigns) over those that target passive processes, such as automatic enrolment or defaults (Jung and Mellers, 2016;Reisch and Sunstein 2016;Sunstein 2016b;Sunstein et al 2018). One study (Osman et al 2018) finds that transparent nudges tend to be judged to be more ethical than opaque ones. Similar concerns might be at play when people prefer nudges that educate consumers about choices (e.g., calorie labels on foods) over those that steer choices through use of choice architecture in cafeterias (Arad and Rubinstein 2018;Felsen et al 2013).…”

“…Some evidence suggests that the acceptability of regulatory interventions depends, in part, on their perceived effectiveness (suggesting that effectiveness is causally related to public approval) and also the inferred motivations of the choice architect (Bang et al 2018). More concretely, an experimental study (Osman et al 2018) has found that scientists proposing nudges are deemed more trustworthy than a government working group. In the same study, trust in hypothetical nudges proposed by the former was higher than in nonhypothetical interventions proposed by the latter (ibid.).…”

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

“…Behavioral interventions (BIs)sometimes called nudgesuse behavioral science to generate a change in behavior without fundamentally changing the incentive structure of the context in which decisions are made (see Osman et al, 2018; see also Oliver, 2013). BIs can be used for many ends (e.g., to conserve the environment, to get people to pay their taxes on time or to promote health and wellbeing).…”

“…Recent work suggests that the majority of the public find BIs acceptable (Hagman et al, 2015;Jung & Mellers, 2016;Petrescu et al, 2016;Osman et al, 2018;Venema et al, 2018). However, people may approve of BIs because they hope that they will change other people's behavior.…”