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Research papers on Nudges and behavioral economics

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  1. Nudging and Boosting: Steering or Empowering Good Decisions

    Ralph Hertwig, Till Grüne‐Yanoff · 2017 · Perspectives on Psychological Science · 838 citations

    In recent years, policy makers worldwide have begun to acknowledge the potential value of insights from psychology and behavioral economics into how people make decisions. These insights can inform the design of nonregulatory and nonmonetary policy interventions-as well as more traditional fiscal and coercive measures. To date, much of the discussion of behaviorally informed approaches has emphasized "nudges," that is, interventions designed to steer people in a particular direction while preserving their freedom of choice. Yet behavioral science also provides support for a distinct kind of nonfiscal and noncoercive intervention, namely, "boosts." The objective of boosts is to foster people'

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  2. Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?

    Shlomo Benartzi, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, et al. · 2017 · Psychological Science · 811 citations

    Governments are increasingly adopting behavioral science techniques for changing individual behavior in pursuit of policy objectives. The types of "nudge" interventions that governments are now adopting alter people's decisions without coercion or significant changes to economic incentives. We calculated ratios of impact to cost for nudge interventions and for traditional policy tools, such as tax incentives and other financial inducements, and we found that nudge interventions often compare favorably with traditional interventions. We conclude that nudging is a valuable approach that should be used more often in conjunction with traditional policies, but more calculations are needed to dete

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  3. Nudging: A Very Short Guide

    Cass R. Sunstein · 2014 · Journal of Consumer Policy · 790 citations

    This brief essay offers a general introduction to the idea of nudging, along with a list of 10 of the most important “nudges.” It also provides a short discussion of the question whether to create some kind of separate “behavioral insights unit,” capable of conducting its own research, or instead to rely on existing institutions.

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  4. Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice

    Pelle Guldborg Hansen, Andreas Maaløe Jespersen · 2013 · European Journal of Risk Regulation · 776 citations

    In Nudge (2008) Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggested that public policy–makers arrange decision–making contexts in ways to promote behaviour change in the interest of individual citizens as well as that of society. However, in the public sphere and Academia alike widespread discussions have appeared concerning the public acceptability of nudgebased behavioural policy. Thaler and Sunstein's own position is that the anti–nudge position is a literal non–starter, because citizens are always influenced by the decision making context anyway, and nudging is liberty preserving and acceptable if guided by Libertarian Paternalism and Rawls’ publicity principle. A persistent and central tenet in

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  5. The effectiveness of nudging: A meta-analysis of choice architecture interventions across behavioral domains

    Stéphanie Mertens, Mario Herberz, Ulf J.J. Hahnel, et al. · 2021 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 728 citations

    = 0.45 (95% CI [0.39, 0.52]). In addition, we find that the effectiveness of choice architecture interventions varies significantly as a function of technique and domain. Across behavioral domains, interventions that target the organization and structure of choice alternatives (decision structure) consistently outperform interventions that focus on the description of alternatives (decision information) or the reinforcement of behavioral intentions (decision assistance). Food choices are particularly responsive to choice architecture interventions, with effect sizes up to 2.5 times larger than those in other behavioral domains. Overall, choice architecture interventions affect behavior relati

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  6. Judging nudging: can nudging improve population health?

    Theresa M. Marteau, David Ogilvie, Martín Roland, et al. · 2011 · BMJ · 644 citations

    Nudging has captured the imagination of the public, researchers, and policy makers as a way of changing human behaviour, with both the UK and US governments embracing it. Theresa Marteau and colleagues ask whether the concept stands up to scientific scrutiny

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  7. Nudging consumers towards healthier choices: a systematic review of positional influences on food choice

    Tamara Bucher, Clare E. Collins, Megan E. Rollo, et al. · 2016 · British Journal Of Nutrition · 538 citations

    Nudging or 'choice architecture' refers to strategic changes in the environment that are anticipated to alter people's behaviour in a predictable way, without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. Nudging strategies may be used to promote healthy eating behaviour. However, to date, the scientific evidence has not been systematically reviewed to enable practitioners and policymakers to implement, or argue for the implementation of, specific measures to support nudging strategies. This systematic review investigated the effect of positional changes of food placement on food choice. In total, seven scientific databases were searched using relevant keywords

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  8. Digital Nudging

    Markus Weinmann, Christoph Schneider, Jan vom Brocke · 2016 · Business & Information Systems Engineering · 526 citations

    Nudging, Information systems design, Human–computer interaction, Online choice architecture

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  9. Nudges for Privacy and Security

    Alessandro Acquisti, Idris Adjerid, Rebecca Balebako, et al. · 2017 · ACM Computing Surveys · 514 citations

    Advancements in information technology often task users with complex and consequential privacy and security decisions. A growing body of research has investigated individuals’ choices in the presence of privacy and information security tradeoffs, the decision-making hurdles affecting those choices, and ways to mitigate such hurdles. This article provides a multi-disciplinary assessment of the literature pertaining to privacy and security decision making. It focuses on research on assisting individuals’ privacy and security choices with soft paternalistic interventions that nudge users toward more beneficial choices. The article discusses potential benefits of those interventions, highlights

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  10. 23 Ways to Nudge

    Ana Caraban, Evangelos Karapanos, Daniel Gonçalves, et al. · 2019 · 470 citations

    Ten years ago, Thaler and Sunstein introduced the notion of nudging to talk about how subtle changes in the 'choice architecture' can alter people's behaviors in predictable ways. This idea was eagerly adopted in HCI and applied in multiple contexts, including health, sustainability and privacy. Despite this, we still lack an understanding of how to design effective technology-mediated nudges. In this paper we present a systematic review of the use of nudging in HCI research with the goal of laying out the design space of technology-mediated nudging - the why (i.e., which cognitive biases do nudges combat) and the how (i.e., what exact mechanisms do nudges employ to incur behavior change). A

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  15. Choice Architecture in Consumer Financial Decisions

    Min Zhao · 2018 · Review of Behavioral Economics · 5 citations

    Outstanding U.S. consumer credit totalled $3.84 trillion, emphasizing the fact that helping consumers effectively manage their personal finances has never been more important. Among the three pillars of financial well-being, this paper addresses the last pillar related to behavioral facilitation, given that one of the biggest challenges most consumers face is their inability to convert their best intentions into actual behavior. Specifically, this paper reviews and discusses various behavioral interventions in choice architecture designed to facilitate healthy financial behavior. These include enhancing physical height to increase level of thinking and long-term focus, incorporating incident

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  18. Digital Choice Architecture in Medical Education: Applying Behavioral Economics to Online Learning Environments

    Victoria Ekstrom · 2026 · JMIR Medical Education · 1 citations

    Abstract Health care has widely adopted behavioral economics to influence clinical practice, with documented success using defaults and social comparison feedback in electronic health records. However, online medical education, now the dominant modality for continuing professional development, remains designed on assumptions of rational learning that behavioral science has disproven in clinical contexts. This viewpoint examines the paradox of applying sophisticated behavioral insights to clinical work while designing digital learning environments as if learners are immune to cognitive limitations. We propose digital choice architecture for medical education: intentional int

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  19. Nudge, Choice Architecture, and Libertarian Paternalism

    Pierre Schlag · 2010 · Michigan Law Review

    By all external appearances, Nudge is a single book-two covers, a single spine, one title. But put these deceptive appearances aside, read the thing, and you will actually find two books-Book One and Book Two. Book One begins with the behavioral economist's view that sometimes individuals are not the best judges of their own welfare. Indeed, given the propensity of human beings for cognitive errors (e.g., the availability bias) and the complexity of decisions that need to be made (e.g., choosing prescription plans), individuals often make mistakes. Enter here the idea of the nudge-the deliberate effort to channel people into making the selections that are best for them. The key thing about a

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  20. ARCHITECTURE OF CHOICE – ADVICES OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

    Venelin Terziev · 2017 · Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People

    THE NEW BOOK BY PROFESSOR DIMITAR KANEV A book review by Venelin Terziev Dimitar Kanev is professor and doctor of economic sciences. He is one of the known and established Bulgarian scientists, whose major interests are connected with the general economic theory, behavioural theory, economics and management of education and economics of labour. He is professor at Nikola Vaptsarov Higher Naval School in Varna and at Chernorizets Hrabar Varna Free University.

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  21. Beyond background noise: underutilized sonic choice architecture in hospitality

    Bingqing Liu · 2026 · Frontiers in Behavioral Economics

    Hospitality and consumer environments are undoubtedly multisensory, yet auditory stimuli remain underutilized as intentional components of choice architecture. This mini-review synthesizes evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics examining how soundscapes—particularly micro-auditory cues such as door clicks and elevator tones—are undervalued in their functions as behavioral nudges that influence guest perception and decision-making within bounded rationality frameworks. Current evidence demonstrates that auditory stimuli activate affective priming, processing fluency, and associative memory mechanisms that systematically bias consumer judgments of value and satisfacti

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  22. Decisions Affecting Choices: Current State and Future Directions for Applied Choice Architecture Research in Economics

    Magnus Aagaard Skeie · 2024 · Review of Behavioral Economics

    Choice architecture (CA) is the design of decision-making environments. Experimental studies of CA interventions like nudges have been used to inform public policymaking. However, the generalizability of such experiments has been challenged frequently, and the welfare implications of paternalistic interventions like nudges are not self-evident. I conduct a systematic literature review of 52 publications from the Scopus and Web of Science databases to evaluate extant applied CA research in economics from an experimental design perspective and suggest future directions enabling more robust and welfare-enhancing policymaking. I reveal a notable absence of discussions pertaining to both internal

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