Can a nudge keep you warm? Using nudges to reduce excess winter deaths: insight from the Keeping Warm in Later Life Project (KWILLT)

Nudges are interventions that aim to change people's behaviour through changing the environment in which they choose rather than appealing to their reasoning. Nudges have been proposed as of possible use in relation to health-related behaviour. However, nudges have been criticized as ethically dubious because they bypass peoples reasoning and (anyway) are of little help in relation to affecting ill-health that results from social determinants, such as poverty. Reducing the rate of excess winter deaths (EWDs) is a public health priority; however, EWD seems clearly to be socially determined such that nudges arguably have little role. This article defends two claims: (i) nudges could have a place in tackling even the heavily socially determined problem of EWD. We draw on evidence from an empirical study, the Keeping Warm in Later Life Project (KWILLT), to argue that in some cases the risk of cold is within the person’s control to some extent such that environmental modifications to influence behaviour such as nudges are possible. (ii) Some uses of behavioural insights in the form of nudges are acceptable, including some in the area of EWD. We suggest a question-based framework by which to judge the ethical acceptability of nudges

Is nudging really extra-legal?

Some of the scholarly literature on nudges seems to assume, without giving it much further thought, that nudges represent a non-legal or extra-legal form of regulation. Others routinely assume nudges to be legal, i.e. capable of being authorized and implemented in accordance with the law. Perhaps the term ‘law’ is used in different senses in these two contexts. But the issue may run deeper. The question about the (extra-)legal character of nudges is not simply whether certain regulatory interventions can be implemented legally in country X or Y. Rather, it is whether nudges represent a genuinely distinct mode of governance, with a corresponding distinct normativity. In this paper I take a closer look at what makes a mode or technique of governance legal and query whether nudges can meet these criteria. This I shall do with reference to some of the abstract, and sometimes perhaps obscure, conceptual debates on the nature of law and the tasks of jurisprudence. Within the confines of this paper, I do not provide a fully-fledged theory of the nature of law. But in order to spell out the possible, and plausible, answers to the question in the title, I discuss some representative jurisprudential ideas and debates as to what kind of governance mechanism law is, drawing attention to the tension between instrumental and non-instrumental views of law and spelling out some conceptual consequences regarding nudges

Numerical model estimation of biomethane production using an anaerobic CSTR: model formulation, parameter estimation and uncertainty/sensitivity analysis

Global climate change is becoming of increasing concern. Transportation makes up a large part of carbon gasses, which affects climate change and air quality. As transportation is a big part of carbon emissions, everybody can contribute to reducing emissions through transportation. One way for people to contribute is to start choosing greener transportation. Nuding is a tool that can be used to get people to choose greener transportation. It's function is to help guide people's behavior. For this project, the nudging goal is to nudge people towards healthier and greener transportation options than already in use. An example of a nudge is to provide reminders of bus departure times for a trip to an event. In order to nudge people gathering information relevant for traveling is necessary. In this thesis, relevant information for green transportation nudges is researched. Other studies on green transportation nudges are applied to discover relevant information topics and sources. Microservices architecture is proposed as the architecture for designing nudges, where the system is divided into smaller interconnected services that work together. Demonstrators of information collection microservices are designed and implemented. The demonstrators handle data for different information topics relevant to green transportation nudges. There are demonstrators for collecting weather data, routing data, public transportation data, rental bikes and scooters data, calendar data, and location data. The thesis also discusses how the data collected can be used to form transportation nudges

Behavioural public policies and charitable giving

Some of the challenges in Sanders et al. (this issue) can be aptly illustrated by means of charity nudges, that is, nudges designed to increase charitable donations. These nudges raise many ethical questions. First, Oxfam’s triptychs with suggested donations are designed to increase giving. If successful, do our actions match ex ante or ex post preferences? Does this make a difference to the autonomy of the donor? Second, the Behavioural Insights Team conducted experiments using social networks to nudge people to give more. Do these appeals steer clear of exploiting power relations? Do they respect boundaries of privacy? Third, in an online campaign by Kiva, donors are asked to contribute directly to personalized initiatives. In many cases, the initiative has already been funded and donor money is funnelled to a new cause. Is such a “pre-disbursal” arrangement truthful and true to purpose as a social business model

Lessons learned from evaluating eight password nudges in the wild

Background. The tension between security and convenience, when creating passwords, is well established. It is a tension that often leads users to create poor passwords. For security designers, three mitigation strategies exist: issuing passwords, mandating minimum strength levels or encouraging better passwords. The first strategy prompts recording, the second reuse, but the third merits further investigation. It seemed promising to explore whether users could be subtly nudged towards stronger passwords.Aim. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of visual nudges on self-chosen password length and/or strength.Method. A university application, enabling students to check course dates and review grades, was used to support two consecutive empirical studies over the course of two academic years. In total, 497 and 776 participants, respectively, were randomly assigned either to a control or an experimental group. Whereas the control group received no intervention, the experimental groups were presented with different visual nudges on the registration page of the web application whenever passwords were created. The experimental groups’ password strengths and lengths were then compared that of the control group.Results. No impact of the visual nudges could be detected, neither in terms of password strength nor length. The ordinal score metric used to calculate password strength led to a decrease in variance and test power, so that the inability to detect an effect size does not definitively indicate that such an effect does not exist.Conclusion. We cannot conclude that the nudges had no effect on password strength. It might well be that an actual effect was not detected due to the experimental design choices. Another possible explanation for our result is that password choice is influenced by the user’s task, cognitive budget, goals and pre-existing routines. A simple visual nudge might not have the power to overcome these forces. Our lessons learned therefore recommend the use of a richer password strength quantification measure, and the acknowledgement of the user’s context, in future studies

Nudges and other moral technologies in the context of power: Assigning and accepting responsibility

Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility in someone else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can (reasonably be expected to) manage

Rethinking Nudge: Not One But Three Concepts

Nudge is a concept of policy intervention that originates in Thaler and Sunstein's (2008) popular eponymous book. Following their own hints, we distinguish three properties of nudge interventions: they redirect individual choices by only slightly altering choice conditions (here nudge 1), they use rationality failures instrumentally (here nudge 2), and they alleviate the unfavourable effects of these failures (here nudge 3). We explore each property in semantic detail and show that no entailment relation holds between them. This calls into question the theoretical unity of nudge, as intended by Thaler and Sunstein and most followers. We eventually recommend pursuing each property separately, both in policy research and at the foundational level. We particularly emphasize the need of reconsidering the respective roles of decision theory and behavioural economics to delineate nudge 2 correctly. The paper differs from most of the literature in focusing on the definitional rather than the normative problems of nudge

Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human Agency

List of Stress Shared Gene

A practitioner's guide to nudging

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