Ethical perspective

On this page the ethical perspective on nudge marketing will be discussed. Questions that will be answered are whether nudges increase people's well-being? How nudges affect people's autonomy? Do nudges put people's integrity at stake? And how are ethical and political perspectives of nudge linked?

ETHICS OF NUDGE!

Although nudge has brought in some prospects it has also shared a fair level of criticism. Tammy Boyce, from public health foundation The King's Fund, recommended to move away from short-term, politically motivated initiatives such as the 'nudging people' idea, which are not based on any good evidence and don't help people make long-term behaviour changes. (Lakhani, 2008). On the other hand, Cass Sunstein has responded in favor of nudging, against the charges that nudges diminish autonomy, threaten dignity, violate liberties or reduce welfare (Schubert, 2015). Nudges have been charged by Wilkinson for being manipulative, while others such as Yeung question their scientific credibility (Yeung, 2012).

Behavioral economists such as Bob Sugden have pointed out the benchmark of nudging is still homo oeconomicus (ie. economic theories portraying humans as consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agents who usually pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally), despite the proponents' claim to the contrary (Sugden, 2017). However many think that it is important to better understand the psychological factors that predict long-term behavioral changes (van der Linden, 2013). Nudge theory and similar policy frameworks have been criticized by some psychologists for failing to take into account the psychological determinants of the behaviours that they are trying to change, despite the ethical implications (Fischer, 2014).

With such mixed opinions that exist around nudges, the factors which are believed to have a major impact are discussed below (Schubert, 2016).

As a consequence, the standard notion that defines wellbeing as the technical degree of satisfaction cannot be applied (Schubert, 2016). But according to Chetty (2015), nudges may still be ‘pragmatically’ useful in achieving specific policy goals that citizens have somehow agreed upon beforehand. On the contrary, nudges are used for issues like using an opt-out default instead of an opt-in default to increase the organ donor rates in countries like Austria, France and Hungary. We can still argue that all citizens should make their own free choice (Johnson, 2003).

Individuals are then argued to lose ‘control’ over their own preferences (Hausman and Welch 2010). It is important for us to realize that preference is a phenomena which is influenced by experiences, liking, willingness to change and a lot of day to day factors which moulds preference in a certain direction, many of which happen subconsciously (Schubert, 2016). So to raise question upon nudges, due to the fact that it is a conscious effort, disturbing our autonomy may not be logically justified (Schubert, 2016).

Some kinds of nudges clearly support informed active choosing while others rather seem to discourage people from engaging in active choice (Sunstein, 2014b). Put differently, some nudges may produce ‘excessive convenience’ that is some choice architect, subtly steers the consumer into the ‘right’ direction by changing defaults and frames, in other words, the choices of the consumers are outsourced to some external body (Schubert, 2016). On the contrary, this appears to display the ‘infantilization effect’ of nudging (Bovens 2009, White 2013), where there is a pickle over which kinds of preferences should be promoted (Hargreaves Heap 2013).

People seem to face a tradeoff between ‘excessive convenience’ on the one hand (which discourages active choosing), and ‘too little’ convenience on the other hand (leaving them overwhelmed with complex choices) (Schubert, 2016). This trade-off looks different for different kinds of goods, like with primary goods that satisfy basic needs, there exists a conjecture that most people will favour delegating choices, at least partly, to trusted external bodies (Schubert, 2016).

Conclusion

In most cases, nudges are likely to be seen as a gentle push towards a favourable direction, but ‘in whose favour’ is still under a lot of speculation. The arguments, both in favour and against nudge marketing make us think about its ethicality but nudges were designed with the intention to promote a certain behaviour which have mixed effects on different type of consumers. Another popular observation can be the fact that it works with short term actions or impulses and hence its not factual to make conclusions on the long term effects on the consumers. In summary, nudge seems to be a noble initiative which needs more understanding and inflexible boundaries to work within.