Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:43:04.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Definition of Nudge and Libertarian Paternalism: Does the Hand Fit the Glove?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Pelle Guldborg Hansen
Pelle Guldborg Hansen*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, Business & Information Technologies, Roskilde University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In recent years the concepts of ‘nudge’ and ‘libertarian paternalism’ have become popular theoretical as well as practical concepts inside as well as outside academia. But in spite of the widespread interest, confusion reigns as to what exactly is to be regarded as a nudge and how the underlying approach to behaviour change relates to libertarian paternalism. This article sets out to improve the clarity and value of the definition of nudge by reconciling it with its theoretical foundations in behavioural economics. In doing so it not only explicates the relationship between nudges and libertarian paternalism, but also clarifies how nudges relate to incentives and information, and may even be consistent with the removal of certain types of choices. In the end we are left with a revised definition of the concept of nudge that allows for consistently categorising behaviour change interventions as such and that places them relative to libertarian paternalism.

Type
Articles
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 155 - 174
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
© Pelle Guldborg Hansen 2016 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

References

1 Thaler, Richard H. and Sunstein, Cass R., Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Revised and Expanded Edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2009).Google Scholar

2 Conly, Sarah, Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), at p. 29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 Kahneman, Daniel, “Foreword”, in Shafir, Eldar (ed.), The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. VII et sqq., at p. VIII.Google Scholar

4 Lunn, Pete, Regulatory Policy and Behavioural Economics (OECD Publishing, 2014).Google Scholar

5 Barry Schwartz, “Why not nudge? A Review of Cass Sunstein’s Why Nudge”, 17 April 2014, available on the internet at: <http://thepsychreport.com/essays-discussion/nudge-review-cass-sunsteins-why-nudge/> (last accessed on 17 April 2014).

6 Sunstein, Cass R., Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).Google Scholar

7 See e.g. Calo, Ryan, “Code, Nudge, or Notice”, 99(2) Iowa Law Review (2014), pp. 773 et sqq Google Scholar; Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi, “Nudge No More”, New Scientist, 26 November 2011: <http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2011/11/does_nudge_policy_work_a_critique_of_sunstein_and_thaler_.html> (last accessed on 26 November 2014); Lunn, Regulatory Policy and Behavioural Economics, supra note 4; Ploug, Thomas, Holm, Søren and Brodersen, John, “To nudge or not to nudge: cancer screening programmes and the limits”, 66(12) Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (2012), pp. 1193 et sqq CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Anthony Randazzo, “The Case Against Libertarian Paternalism”, 23 April 2013, available on the internet: <http://reason.com/archives/2013/04/23/the-case-against-libertarian-paternalism> (last accessed 26 November 2014); White, Mark D., The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mark D. White, “The richness of personal interests: A neglected aspect of the nudge debate”, 23 October 2013, available on the internet at: <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-richness-of-personal-interests-a-neglected-aspect-of-the-nudge-debate/> (last accessed 26 November 2014); Paula Zoido-Oses, “The problem with nudge policies is that threaten our freedom to choose to act well”, 9 July 2014, available on the internet at: <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-problem-with-nudge-policies-freedom-to-choose/#Author> (last accessed on 26 November 2014).

8 See also Calo, “Code, Nudge, or Notice”, supra note 7, at p. 773, 775, 783, 785, 786, and 795; Conly, Against Autonomy, supra note 2, at p. 29–31; Lunn, Regulatory Policy and Behavioural Economics, supra note 4; Farrell and Shalizi, “Nudge No More”, supra note 7; Ploug, Holm and Brodersen, “To nudge or not to nudge”, supra note 7; Sunstein, Why Nudge?, supra note 6, at p. 58.

9 See e.g. Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 3; and Salazar, Alberto, “Libertarian Paternalism and the Dangers of Nudging Consumers”, 23(1) King's Law Journal (2012), pp. 51 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See e.g. Salazar, “Libertarian Paternalism and the Dangers of Nudging Consumers”, supra note 9; and Schlag, Pierre, “Nudge, Choice Architecture, and Libertarian Paternalism”, 108(6) Michigan Law Review (2010), pp. 913 et sqq.Google Scholar

11 See e.g. the debate concerning user financial incentives as nudges around Oliver, Adam, “A nudge too far? A nudge at all? On paying people to be healthy”, 12(4) Healthcare Papers (2012), pp. 8 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Sunstein and Thaler, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 8 footnote.

13 Philippe Mongin and Cozic Mikaël, “Rethinking Nudges”, (HEC Paris Research Paper No. ECO/SCD-2014-1067, 2014).

14 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 8.

15 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, (Ibid).

16 Sunstein, Why Nudge, supra note 6, at p. 64–65.

17 Mongin and Cozic, “Rethinking Nudges”, supra note 13, at p. 6 and Schlag, “Nudge, Choice Architecture, and Libertarian Paternalism”, supra note 10, at p. 917.

18 Michael M. Grynbaum, “Health panel approves the restriction on sale of large sugary drinks”, New York Times, 13 September 2012.

19 Richard Thaler, Tweet on Twitter, 31 May 2012, available on the internet: <https://twitter.com/R_Thaler/status/208273339507150849> (last accessed on 27 December 2014).

20 See e.g. Oliver Burkeman, “‘How Bloomberg's soda ban is a classic example of ‘choice architecture’’, Blog on The Guardian, 10 July 2012, available on the internet at: <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkemans-blog/2012/jul/10/bloomberg-soda-ban-new-york-freedom> (last accessed 26 December 2014) and Pelle Guldborg Hansen, “The ‘Big Gulp Ban’ – a nudge or not?”, 8 October 2012, available on the internet: <http://inudgeyou.com/the-big-gulp-ban-a-nudge-or-not/> (last accessed 26 December, 2014).

21 Mongin and Cozic, “Rethinking Nudges”, supra note 13; and Sunstein, Why Nudge, supra note 6, at p. 58.

22 Hausman, Daniel and Welch, Brynn, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, 18 Journal of Political Philosophy (2010), pp. 123 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 See Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 6.

24 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 8.

25 Hansen, Pelle Guldborg and Jespersen, Andreas Maaløe, “Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice: A Framework for the Responsible Use of the Nudge Approach to Behaviour Change in Public Policy”, 1 European Journal of Risk Regulation (2013), pp. 3 et sqq, at p. 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Mongin and Cozic, “Rethinking Nudges”, supra note 13.

27 Thaler, Richard H. and Sunstein, Cass R., “Libertarian Paternalism”, 93(2) American Economic Review (2003), pp. 175 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Thaler and Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalism”, supra note 27, at p. 175.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid, at p. 179.

33 Ibid, at p. 175.

34 See e.g. Hausman and Welch, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, supra note 22.

35 Mitchell, Gregory, “Libertarian paternalism is an oxymoron”, 99 Northwestern University Law Review (2005), pp. 1245, et sqq.Google Scholar

36 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 5.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Van De Veer, Donald, Paternalistic Intervention: The Moral Bounds on Benevolence, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 5.

44 Thaler and Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalism”, supra note 27, at p. 175.

45 Ibid.

46 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 6.

47 Ibid.

48 See supra note 8.

49 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 6.

50 See e.g. Mongin and Cozic, “Rethinking Nudges”, supra note 13; and House of Commons, Public Health: Twelfth Report of Session 2010-12, Vol. 1: Report. Together with Formal Minutes (Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee 2011), at p. 84.Google Scholar

51 See e.g. Rizzo, Mario J. and Whitman, Douglas Glen, “Little Brother Is Watching You: New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes”, 51 Arizona Law Review 2009, pp. 685 et sqq Google Scholar; and Adam C. Smith and Todd J. Zywicki, “Behavior, Paternalism, and Policy: Evaluating Consumer Financial Protection”, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 14-05 (2014), at p. 12.

52 See e.g. Tim Adams, “Nudge economics: has push come to shove for a fashionable theory?”, The Guardian, 1 June 2014, available on the internet at <http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/01/nudge-economics-freakonomics-daniel-kahneman-debunked> (last accessed on 27 December 2014); John Tierney, “A Nudge (or Is it a Shove?) To the Unwise”, New York Times, 24 March 2008, available on the internet at <http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/a-nudge-or-is-it-a-shove-to-the-unwise/> (last accessed on 27 December 2014).

53 See Gupta, Anil, “Definitions”, in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Fall 2014 Edition)Google Scholar, available on the internet <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/definitions/> last accessed (28 December 2014).

54 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 6–8.

55 Ibid.

56 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, p. 4–6.

57 See also Gilovich, Thomas and Griffin, Dale, “Introduction - Heuristics and Biases: Then and Now”, in Gilovich, Thomas, Griffin, Dale and Kahneman, Daniel (eds.), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1 et sqq CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peterson, Martin, An Introduction to Decision Theory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, p. 7.

59 See also Jolls, Christine, Sunstein, Cass R. and Thaler, Richard, “A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics”, 50(5) Stanford Law Review (1998), pp. 1471 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Gilovich and Griffin, “Introduction - Heuristics and Biases”, supra note 57.

61 See e.g. Kahneman, Daniel, “Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics”, 93(5) The American Economic Review (2003), pp. 1449 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (London: Allen Lane 2011).Google Scholar

62 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 8.

63 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 6.

64 Hausman and Welch, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, supra note 22, at p. 126.

65 See e.g. Hendricks, Vincent F. and Hansen, Pelle Guldborg, Infostorms: How to Take Information Punches and Save Democracy (New York: Springer, Copernicus, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sunstein, Cass R. Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

66 See e.g. Oullette, Judith A. and Wood, Wendy, “Habit and Intention in Everyday Life: The Multiple Processes by Which Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior”, 124(1) Psychological Bulletin (1998), pp. 54 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge, supra note 1, at p. 9.

68 Hausman and Welch, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, supra note 22, at p. 123–136.

69 Burns, Zach, Chiu, Andrew and Wu, George, “Overweighting of small probabilities”, in Cochran, James J. (ed), Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science (New York: Wiley, 2010).Google Scholar

70 Shefrin, H. and Thaler, Richard, “The behavioral life-cycle hypothesis”, 26 Economic Inquiry (1988), pp. 609 et sqq CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thaler, Richard H., “Mental Accounting Matters”, 12 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (1999), pp. 183 et sqq.3.0.CO;2-F>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71 Cartwright, Edward, Behavioral Economics (New York: Routledge Advanced Texts in Economics and Finance, 2011), p. 143–147.Google Scholar

72 Thomas, Manoj and Morwitz, Vicki, “Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: The Left-Digit Effect in Price Cognition”, 32(1) Journal of Consumer Research (2005), pp. 55 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 See Huber, Joel, Payne, John W. and Puto, Christopher, “Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity Hypothesis”, 9(1) Journal of Consumer Research (1982), pp. 90 et sqq CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simonson, Itamar and Tversky, Amos, “Choice in context: Tradeoff contrast and extremeness aversion”, 29 Journal of Marketing Research (1992), pp. 281 et sqq.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Huber, Payne and Puto, “Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives”, supra note 73; Simonson and Tversky, “Choice in context”, supra note 73.

75 See e.g. Huber, Payne and Puto, “Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives”, supra note 73.

76 Peterson, An Introduction to Decision Theory, supra note 57, at p. 99.

77 Sen, Amartya, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden Day, Inc., 1970), at p. 17.Google Scholar

78 Sunstein, Why Nudge?, supra note 6, at p. 55

79 Steffen Altmann and Christian Traxler, “Nudges at the Dentist”, (IZA Discussion Papers 6699, Institute for the Study of Labor, 2012).

80 Sunstein, Why Nudge?, supra note 6, at p. 39–44.

81 Calo, “Code, Nudge, or Notice”, supra note 7.

82 See Hansen and Jespersen, “Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice”, supra note 25.

83 Hausman and Welch, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, supra note 22.

84 See e.g. Ibid, at p. 126.

85 Ibid, at p. 133.

86 Hansen and Jespersen, “Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice”, supra note 25, at p. 10.

87 Ibid.

88 Hausman and Welch, “Debate: To Nudge or Not to Nudge”, supra note 22, at p. 126.

89 Sunstein, Why Nudge?, supra note 6.

90 Pelle G. Hansen, “Nudge for good”, Policy Options, 3 Jun 2013, pp. 22–23 et sqq.

91 Sunstein, Why Nudge?, supra note 6, at p. 55.