Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:59:37.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TOWARD A FRAMEWORK FOR SELECTING BEHAVIOURAL POLICIES: HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN BOOSTS AND NUDGES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2018

Till Grüne-Yanoff ,
Caterina Marchionni  and
Markus A. Feufel
Till Grüne-Yanoff
Affiliation:
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Division of Philosophy, Brinellvägen 32, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
Caterina Marchionni
Affiliation:
Centre for Philosophy of Social Science, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Unioninkatu 40A, 00014 Helsinki, Finland. Email: [email protected].
Markus A. Feufel
Affiliation:
Technische Universität Berlin, Department of Psychology and Ergonomics, Division of Ergonomics, Marchstr. 23 (MAR 3-2), 10587 Berlin, Germany. Email: [email protected]. URL: http://www.awb.tu-berlin.de/.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

In this paper, we analyse the difference between two types of behavioural policies – nudges and boosts. We distinguish them on the basis of the mechanisms through which they are expected to operate and identify the contextual conditions that are necessary for each policy to be successful. Our framework helps judging which type of policy is more likely to bring about the intended behavioural outcome in a given situation.

Keywords

behavioural policynudgeboostheuristicdecision-makingB40D04D60
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , July 2018 , pp. 243 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allcott, H. and Rogers, T.. 2014. The short-run and long-run effects of behavioral interventions: experimental evidence from energy conservation. American Economic Review 104: 3003–3037.Google Scholar
Bhargava, S. and Loewenstein, G.. 2015. Behavioral economics and public policy: beyond nudging. American Economic Review 105: 396–401.Google Scholar
Benartzi, S. and Thaler, R. H.. 2013. Behavioral economics and the retirement savings crisis. Science 339 (6124): 1152–1153. doi: 10.1126/science.1231320.Google Scholar
Beshears, J., Choi, J. J., Laibson, D. and Madrian, B. C.. 2009. The importance of default options for retirement saving outcomes: Evidence from the United States. Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment, ed. Brown, J. R., Liebman, J. B. and Wise, D. A., 167–195. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bond, M. 2009. Risk school. Nature 461: 1189–1192.Google Scholar
Bovens, L. 2009. The ethics of nudge. In Preference Change: Approaches from Philosophy, Economics and Psychology, ed. Grüne-Yanoff, T. and Hansson, S. O., 207–219. New York, NY: SpringerGoogle Scholar
Brehm, S. and Brehm, J.. 1981. Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Camerer, C., Issacharoff, S., Loewenstein, G., O'Donoghue, T., and Rabin, M.. 2003. Regulation for conservatives: behavioral economics and the case for ‘asymmetric paternalism’. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 151: 1211–1254.Google Scholar
Campbell, M. C. 2007. ‘Says Who?!’ How the source of price information and affect influence perceived price (un)fairness. Journal of Marketing Research 44: 261–271.Google Scholar
Cartwright, N. 2010. Presidential address: Will this policy work for you? Predicting effectiveness better: how philosophy helps. Philosophy of Science 79: 973–989.Google Scholar
Cartwright, N. and Hardie, J.. 2012. Evidence-based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing it Better. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chetty, R. 2015. Behavioral economics and public policy: a pragmatic perspective. American Economic Review 105: 1–33.Google Scholar
Chow, S. J. 2015. Many meanings of ‘heuristic’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66: 977–1016.Google Scholar
Clarke, B., Gillies, D., Illari, P., Russo, F. and Williamson, J.. 2014. Mechanisms and the evidence hierarchy. Topoi 33: 339–360.Google Scholar
Craver, C. and Tabery, J.. 2016. Mechanisms in science. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, E. N.. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/science-mechanisms/>..>Google Scholar
de Haan, T. and Linde, J.. 2016. ‘Good nudge lullaby’: choice architecture and default bias reinforcement. Econ J. doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12440.Google Scholar
Drexler, A., Fischer, G. and Schoar, A.. 2014. Keeping it simple: financial literacy and rules of thumb. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6: 1–31.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. 2007. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. New York, NY: Viking.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. and the ABC Research Group. 1999. Simple Heuristics that Make us Smart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Glennan, S. 2016. Mechanisms and mechanical philosophy. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, ed. Humphreys, P.. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199368815.013.39.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, , T. 2016. Why behavioural policy needs mechanistic evidence. Economics and Philosophy 32: 463–483.Google Scholar
Grüne-Yanoff, T. and Hertwig, R.. 2016. Nudge versus boost: how coherent are policy and theory? Minds and Machines 26: 149–183.Google Scholar
Hansen, P.G. 2016. The definition of nudge and libertarian paternalism: does the hand fit the glove? European Journal of Risk Regulation 7:155–174.Google Scholar
Haselton, M. G., Nettle, D. and Andrews, P. W.. 2005. The evolution of cognitive bias. In The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed. Buss, D. M., 724–746. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Hausman, D. and Welch, B.. 2010. To nudge or not to nudge. Journal of Political Philosophy 18:123–136.Google Scholar
Heilmann, C. 2014. Success conditions for nudges: a methodological critique of libertarian paternalism. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4: 75–94.Google Scholar
Hertwig, R., Barron, G., Weber, E.U. and Erev, I.. 2004. Decisions from experience and the effect of rare events in risky choice. Psychological Science 15: 534–539.Google Scholar
Hertwig, R. and Grüne-Yanoff, T.. 2017. Nudging and boosting: steering or empowering good decisions. Perspectives on Psychological Science 12: 973–986.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A.. 1996. On the reality of cognitive illusions: a reply to Gigerenzer's critique. Psychological Review 103: 582–591.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. and Tversky, A.. 1982. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1st edn). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, E. 2011. Health care's brave new world of compulsory wellness. Reuters View, 12 October 2011. <http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2011-10-13/health-care-s-brave-new-world-of-compulsory-wellness-ezra-klein>..>Google Scholar
Loewenstein, G. and Prelec, D.. 1992. Anomalies in intertemporal choice: evidence and an interpretation. Quarterly Journal of Economics 107: 573–597.Google Scholar
Ludwig, J., Kling, J. R. and Mullainathan, S.. 2011. Mechanism experiments and policy evaluations. Journal of Economic Perspectives 25: 17–38.Google Scholar
Marchionni, C. 2017. Mechanisms in economics. In The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy, ed. Glennan, S. and Illari, P., 423–434. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mega, L. F., Gigerenzer, G. and Volz, K. G.. 2015. Do intuitive and deliberate judgments rely on two distinct neural systems? A case study in face processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9: 1–15.Google Scholar
Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A. and Volpp, K. G.. 2013. Holding the hunger games hostage at the gym: an evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science 60: 283–299.Google Scholar
Mitchell, G. 2002. Why law and economics’ perfect rationality should not be traded for behavioral law and economics’ equal incompetence. Geo. LJ 91: 67.Google Scholar
Mongin, P. and Cozic, M.. 2017. Rethinking nudge: not one but three concepts. Behavioural Public Policy, in press.Google Scholar
OECD. 2017. Behavioural Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World. Paris: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Oliver, A. 2013. Behavioural Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pachur, T. and Hertwig, R.. 2006. On the psychology of the recognition heuristic: retrieval primacy as a key determinant of its use. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31: 983–1002.Google Scholar
Polonioli, A. 2016. Reconsidering the normative argument from bounded rationality. Theory and Psychology 26: 287–303.Google Scholar
Rebonato, R. 2012. Taking Liberties: A Critical Examination of Libertarian Paternalism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rieskamp, J. and Otto, P. E.. 2006. SSL: a theory of how people learn to select strategies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 135: 207–236.Google Scholar
Sampson, R. J., Winship, C. and Knight, C.. 2013. Translating causal claims. Principles and strategies for policy-relevant criminology. Criminology and Public Policy 12: 587–616.Google Scholar
Schubert, C. 2017. Exploring the (behavioural) political economy of nudging. Journal of Institutional Economics 13: 499–522.Google Scholar
Shafir, E. 2013. The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Şimşek, Ö. 2013. Linear decision rule as aspiration for simple decision heuristics. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 26: 2904–2912.Google Scholar
Soll, J. B., Milkman, K. L. and Payne, J. W.. 2015. A user's guide to debiasing. In The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, ed. Keren, G. and Wu, G., 924–951. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Steel, D. 2008. Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C. 2016. The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thaler, R. and Benartzi, S.. 2004. Save more tomorrow: using behavioural economics to increase employee savings. Journal of Political Economy 112: 164–187.Google Scholar
Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. R.. 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New York, NY: Penguin.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.. 1974. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Sciences 185: 1124–1131.Google Scholar
Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D.. 1986. Rational choice and the framing of decisions. Journal of Business 59: S251–S278.Google Scholar
van der Linden, S. 2011. Speed dating and decision making: why less is more. Scientific American – Mind Matters (Nature) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/speed-dating-decision-making-why-less-is-more/Google Scholar
Volz, K. G., Schooler, L. J., Schubotz, R. I., Raab, M., Gigerenzer, G. and Von Cramon, D. Y.. 2006. Why you think Milan is larger than Modena: neural correlates of the recognition heuristic. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18: 1924–1936.Google Scholar