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on Nudge and Boosting |
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Issue of 2023‒12‒18
two papers chosen by |
| By: | Mark A. Andor; Lorenz Goette; Michael K. Price; Anna Schulze Tilling; Lukas Tomberg |
| Abstract: | We compare the behavior and welfare effects of two popular interventions for resource conservation. The first intervention is social comparison reports (SC), which primarily provide consumers with information motivating behavioral change. The second intervention is real-time feedback (RTF), which primarily provides consumers with information facilitating behavioral change. In a field experiment with around 1, 000 participants, we directly observe the interventions’ effects on participants’ behavior. Further, we elicit participants’ willingness to pay for receiving the interventions, both before and after having experienced them for one month. We find that SC leads to a reduction in water use per shower by 9.4%, RTF by 28.8%, and the combination (BOTH) by 35.0%. Our willingness to pay results show that all interventions are highly valued by participants and that willingness to pay for RTF and BOTH is significantly higher than for SC. Furthermore, we find that the valuation of the interventions do not change following one-month experience. Our results suggest that while both interventions improve welfare, providing consumers with information facilitating behavioral change achieves a higher impact and a slightly higher welfare increase than providing consumers with information motivating behavioral change. |
| JEL: | C93 D12 Q25 Q55 |
| Date: | 2023–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31845&r=nud |
| By: | Diederich, Johannes; Goeschl, Timo; Waichman, Israel |
| Abstract: | Manipulating choice architectures to achieve social ends ('social nudges') raises problems of ethicality. Giving individuals control over their default choice ('selfnudges') is a possible remedy, but the trade-offs with efficiency are poorly understood. We examine under four different information structures how subjects set own defaults in social dilemmas and whether outcomes differ between the self-nudge and two exogenous defaults, a social (full cooperation) and a selfish (perfect free-riding) nudge. Subjects recruited from the general population (n = 1, 080) play a ten-round, ten-day voluntary contribution mechanism online, with defaults triggered by the absence of an active contribution on the day. We find that individuals' own choice of defaults structurally differs from full cooperation, empirically affirming the ethicality problem of social nudges. Allowing for self-nudges instead of social nudges reduces efficiency at the group level, however. When individual control over nudges is non-negotiable, self-nudges need to be made public to minimize the ethicality-efficiency trade-off. |
| Keywords: | Choice architecture, defaults, public goods, self-nudge, online experiment |
| JEL: | H41 C92 D91 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc23:277679&r=nud |