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Vaccines are highly effective for curbing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Yet, millions of Americans remain hesitant about getting vaccinated, jeopardizing our ability to end the COVID-19 pandemic by fueling the spread and development of new variants. We show that brief video-based messages of encouragement addressing specific COVID-19 vaccine concerns increase vaccination intentions, and that vaccination intentions, in turn, are predictive of future vaccine uptake. Results from our online experiment reveal that willingness to get vaccinated is driven by messages that increase confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and perceived behavioral control to get vaccinated. Importantly, messages were particularly effective among more skeptical populations including people who identify as politically conservative or moderate and those who express low trust in government institutions. Our findings corroborate the real-world behavioral significance of vaccination intentions, and devise how even short, scalable online messages can provide governments and health authorities an inexpensive, yet effective tool for increasing intentions to vaccinate against COVID-19 among populations most reluctant to get them.

Background: Behavioural public policies, known as nudges, suffer from lack of citizen consent and involvement, which has led to an argument for more reflective nudges, known as 'nudge plus'.
Aims and objectives: How can more citizen reflection be introduced in a way that is not itself top-down and paternalist in spite of good intentions? How might these 'nudge pluses' develop on the ground?
Methods: This paper reports a mixed-methods case study.
Findings: In the case study, there was an intervention that started off as a top-down nudge, using a randomised controlled trial. The nudge then evolved into a bottom-up initiative with citizen input aided by a design lab approach.
Discussion and conclusion: One way to address tensions between top-down and bottom-up approaches is to let in the messiness and loss of direct control implied in a design lab, whereby nudge pluses might evolve naturally and without expert direction. The success of the eventual initiative points the way to more design-based nudge plus interventions. Nudge pluses may emerge naturally as a result of the evolutionary co-design process. There is potential for replication, with cross-fertilisation between different traditions by introducing behaviour change policies with a design-based approach.

India's contribution to global CO2 emissions makes it a priority case for policy makers worldwide. The Indian government is considering the adoption of energy labels for new passenger cars to tackle CO2 emissions. This paper's first aim is to asses New Delhi's car buyers' preferences for cars displaying energy labels. To do so, a discrete choice experiment (DCE) has been designed to document both WTP for energy efficiency (212 USD for one kilometer per liter) and WTP for the best efficiency label (4.93 thousand USD). The informational nudge embedded in a labeling system may not be enough to boost uptake of efficient cars. Thus this paper investigates the potential of combining a labeling system and car driving restrictions. Via a split-sample approach, this paper documents an increase of 2.55 thousand USD in stated WTP for the best efficiency label. This number can be interpreted as reflecting the costs imposed by the driving restrictions on car drivers. Under this interpretation, 2.55 thousand USD fall within the range of estimations reported in previous studies. The results in this paper suggest that a combination of driving restrictions and a labeling system may deliver an increase in energy efficient cars in New Delhi.

AbstractOn the one hand, default nudges are proven to strongly influence behavior. On the other hand, a number of consumer autonomy and welfare concerns have been raised that hinder public policy applications. Both nudge success and ethical concerns depend heavily on the design of defaults. We identify six taxonomic characteristics that matter to the ethical and the nudge success dimension. We review the default nudge literature (N = 61) and review ethical studies to assess both dimensions concerning the taxonomy. When designing a default, a choice architect inevitably makes a decision concerning the characteristics. Among others, the results show three main findings. (1) The initial choice architecture regularly imposes welfare losses and impedes consumer autonomy. Forced active choosing can mitigate both issues. (2) Empirical evidence suggests that transparent defaults are similarly effective as the non-transparent counterparts. (3) The framing of the choice in combination with a choice structuring default leads to greater nudge success and tends to involve the reflective decision-making patterns. Choice architects can trade-off nudge success for legitimacy but a design change may also benefit one without harming the other. We discuss further options of choice architects to legitimize a default.

AbstractAn extensive debate has emerged in recent years about the relative merits of behavioral policy instruments (nudges) aimed at changing individual behavior without coercion. In this article, we examine public support for non‐deliberative nudges and deliberative nudges and compare them to attitudes toward top‐down regulation and free choice/libertarian options. We also examine whether support for both types of nudges is associated with perceptions of fairness and efficacy. We test these expectations with a survey experiment with 1706 UK adult respondents (representative of the population on age, gender, and location) in two policy areas (retirement savings and carbon offsets for airline passengers). We find higher levels of public support for both nudge policy options compared to top‐down regulation. Support for nudges is associated with the perceived fairness of nudges more than their efficacy.

In complex and democratic societies, the activity of control and enforce-ment cannot be delegated to an intrusive and omnipresent police apparatus. Even more than in pre-industrial societies, obeyance to the rules of coexistence must be based on spontaneous compliance. The function of social control, which is already favored by the tendential prosociality of human conduct, is also generally based on the threat of a negative consequence. Today we tend to view these threats of punish-ment as necessarily explicit and direct, and codes of legal, moral and religious norms serve this purpose.However, it cannot be excluded that the same goal can be achieved in many situa-tions, sometimes even more effectively, by leveraging an unconscious or semi-uncon-scious bias through a nudge, which surreptitiously directs us towards the behavior deemed socially desirable through a subtle social benchmark. This effect, which we could also define as conformist bias, seems to be achieved through visual stimuli such as the watching-eye, i.e. the more or less stylized image of an eye or of a person observing, placed in salient places from the point of view of the individual decision on the action to be taken.It has been hypothesized that our neural circuits are structured to automatically per-ceive the "social gaze", and provide the reactions necessary to re-orient our behavior. The photographic or stylized image of this watching-eye would seem to obtain an ef-fect of greater compliance in situations in which it is not possible to obtain widespread personal surveillance, to an even greater extent than video surveillance equipment. Nu-merous empirical researches have subjected this hypothesis to empirical verification, and this contribution proposes to offer a review of it with respect to the issues involving social norms of a legal nature, as well as investigating the moral and theoretical implica-tions that derive from it.

AbstractCass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness presents an influential account of why 'choice architecture' should be used to 'nudge' people into making better decisions than they would otherwise make. In this essay we: (1) explain the main concepts that Thaler and Sunstein rely upon to defend their project; (2) clarify the main conceptual problems that have arisen in discussions about nudges; (3) clarify practical difficulties that can arise during nudge practice; (4) review the main ethical and political objections that have been raised against nudging; and (5) clarify why issues related to meaning can pose methodological problems for creating effective choice architecture.

Foreword by David Halpern -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Section 1: Central Teams -- Chapter 2: From innovative to imperative: Evolving the application of behavioral science in the Government of Canada -- Chapter 3: Ten Years of Ireland's Behavioural Research Unit -- Section 2: Line departments -- Chapter 4: Learning by Doing: Designing and Testing Behavioral Interventions to Improve Labor Programs -- Chapter 5: Launching the first federal effort to apply behavioral science to U.S. human services programs -- Chapter 6: Designing for social impact: Behavioral science field studies to improve economic mobility -- Chapter 7: The World's first Government Behavioural Insights Team dedicated to Public Health: Ten Lessons Learned over a Decade of Experience -- Chapter 8: Blending Backgrounds: Building Behavioral Insights at the U.S. IRS -- Section 3: The Global South -- Chapter 9: Reflections from Ideas 42's economic justice team -- Chapter 10: MineduLab, the innovation laboratory for a cost-effective educational policy in Peru -- Chapter 11: Lessons Learned from Applying Behavioral Science in the Middle East -- Chapter 12: Improving Lives in Latin America and the Caribbean -- Chapter 13: Behavioural Insights in South Africa – a view from the Global South, learning, growing, and evolving -- Chapter 14: Expanding beyond nudge: Experiences applying behavioral science for comprehensive social change -- Section 4: Going Local -- Chapter 15: Doing Behavioural Science in the Eternal City: The Case of R² -- Chapter 16: Nudging United States Local Government to What Works -- Chapter 17: Putting Behavioral Science to Work in The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection: The Philadelphia Behavioral Science Initiative -- Section 5: Going Meta -- Chapter 18: The evolution of a rigorous multi-disciplinary behavioural team: lessons from financial regulation in the UK -- Chapter 19: eMBeDding Behavioral Sciences in International Development -- Chapter 20: Behavioural and Cultural Insights for better health: the BCI Unit at WHO Regional Office for Europe -- Chapter 21: Embedding Behavioural Science into the work of the United Nations -- Section 6: Outside Government -- Chapter 22: The Megastudy Approach for Changing Behavior at Scale -- Chapter 23: The Busara Center: Letters To Our Past -- Chapter 24: Inside Out: BCG's Path to Applying and Embedding Behavioral Science .

Nudge and the wider behavioral economics approach has become increasingly dominant in contemporary political and policy discourse. While much attention has been paid to the attractions and criticisms of nudge (such as liberal paternalism), this article argues that nudge is based on a rationality paradox in that it represents an approach that despite its emphasis on bounded rationality, does not reflect on its own limits to rationality. The article considers the implications of this paradox by considering mechanisms that influence government decision making and mechanisms that lead to unintended consequences in the context of policy interventions.

AbstractThe aim of this article is to better understand how judgements about nudge acceptability are formed and whether they can be manipulated. We conducted a randomized experiment withN= 171 participants to test whether acceptability judgements could be (1) more favourable when the decision to implement the nudges was made following a consultation with the targeted population and (2) influenced by the joint framing of the nudge's purpose and effectiveness (in terms of an increase in desirable behaviour versus decrease in undesirable behaviour). We tested these hypotheses on various nudge scenarios and obtained mixed results that do not clearly support our hypotheses for all nudge scenarios. A surprising result that calls for further work is that by mentioning that a nudge had been implemented through a consultation with the targeted population its acceptability could be lowered.

The growing use of digital technologies between consumers and businesses has led to a shift of transactions from an offline context into the online world. These developments have disrupted entire industries, including music, travel, accommodation, and financial services, and created new value pools. A great extent of the value creation can be attributed to profit-oriented business models, as shown by the growing valuation of large platform operators (e.g., Airbnb and Uber). At the same time, significant value is unlocked in non-profit oriented business models such as in the context of non-commercial online sharing economy platforms or the digital government space. However, the online space also brought new challenges to digital platform operators, such as greater rivalry resulting from increasing transparency. As the Internet has largely removed the barriers to information access, website visitors have been enabled to shop around and gather plenty of information before committing to a binding transaction. Therefore, converting visitors to actual customers or users remains a critical task, both for profit-oriented and non-profit oriented digital business model operators, as they need to ensure value is truly captured. Previous research in the Information Systems (IS) space around conversion rate optimization in digital business models has primarily focused on the concept of perceived benefits and associated costs when engaging in a particular transaction. While benefits are often related to the product or service, costs are frequently associated with the lack of trust in the digital platform or website operator due to potential misuse of personal information. In addition to the cost-benefit perspective, website design features have been shown to influence user behavior in both profit-oriented and non-profit oriented digital business models. While the intention of certain design feature elements such as banners or ads is directly visible to users, some design elements are aimed at influencing customer behavior inconspicuously – without the users' notice. The use of visual user interface elements to subtly influence consumer behavior in digital decision environments by leveraging psychological biases are called digital nudges. The literature on digital nudging shows promising results in driving conversion rates in digital business models. However, the use of digital nudges has been mainly limited to research in profit-oriented digital business models. At the same time, traditional, non-digital nudges have been mainly researched in the non-profit oriented context, especially in the government space, which simultaneously represents the origin of nudging theory. By assessing digital nudges in both non-profit and profit-oriented digital business models, three studies attempt to close this gap. The first study investigates the effect of prosociality nudges on conversion rates on a fictional non-profit oriented online sharing economy platform. Results show that while prosociality increases conversion likelihood, excessive prosociality may also reduce the transaction likelihood. The second study shows how two separately framed communication arguments – one promotion-focus argument conveying convenience and a prevention-focus argument aiming to reduce privacy concerns – increase online verification conversion rate in a fictional profit-oriented digital carsharing platform if data supports the claims. While the prevention-focus claim is stronger than the promotion-focus claim if data is added, the prevention-focus claim's conversion rate without data is weaker than no claim. The third study is positioned in the non-profit oriented e-government space, leveraging social proof cues and default options as nudges to increase the adoption rate of electronic identification (eID). Both nudges increase eID adoption, but default options are a double-edged sword. They simultaneously fuel privacy concerns towards the government, which attenuates the effect of the default option on eID adoption. These concerns can be mitigated by adding social proof cues. This thesis contributes to our understanding of how digital nudges may be applied to increase conversion rates within profit-oriented and non-profit oriented digital business models. Specifically, this study demonstrates that digital nudges designed to leverage stability biases and perception biases may be used to increase conversion rates in both profit-oriented and non-profit oriented digital business models. The aforementioned first and third study have contributed to a better understanding of how digital nudges may enhance user conversion in non-profit oriented organizations by leveraging the emotional bias and status quo bias to increase conversion. These studies also provided insights on the combined effect of social proof cues and default options on conversion rates: While default options may be used to increase conversion rates, they are ambidextrous as they increase privacy concerns. However, this can be mitigated by adding social proof cues. The second study contributed to a better understanding of how framing and loss aversion can be leveraged to increase conversion rate in profit-oriented business models. Additionally, this study provided some insights into combining theory on communication arguments with third-party assurance seals as supporting data to enhance the effect of nudges further. From a practical point of view, digital business model operators may leverage these findings to redesign their website by employing digital nudges to drive conversion rates and thus increase profitability.

AbstractCheating is a common human behavior but few studies have examined its emergence during early childhood. In three preregistered studies, a challenging math test was administered to 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children (total N = 500; 255 girls). An answer key was present as children completed the test, but they were instructed to not peek at it. In Study 1, many children cheated, but manipulations that reduced the answer key's accessibility in terms of proximity and visibility led to less cheating. Two follow‐up studies showed that the answer key's visibility played a more significant role than its proximity. These findings suggest that subtle and seemingly insignificant alterations of the physical environment can effectively nudge young children away from acting dishonestly.