Title: what is nudging? | Behavioral Science & Policy Association
Headings: what is nudging?
what is nudging?
By PG Hansen, PhD., Behavioural Scientist, Roskilde University
Nudge
Nudging
Ethics and Policy
About the author

Content: Banning junk food does not.” ( Thaler & Sunstein 2008, p. 6)
However, as I have later pointed out in The Definition of Nudge and Libertarian Paternalism – Does the Hand fit the Glove? ( 2016) this way of defining a nudge easily conflates what is a descriptive behavioral concept with that of the separate political doctrine of libertarian paternalism. Instead we should define a nudge in a precise and consistent way relative to the behavioral sciences. In particular I suggest that we should adopt the following definition: A nudge is a function of (condition I) any attempt at influencing people’s judgment, choice or behavior in a predictable way (condition a) that is motivated because of cognitive boundaries, biases, routines, and habits in individual and social decision-making posing barriers for people to perform rationally in their own self-declared interests, and which (condition b) works by making use of those boundaries, biases, routines, and habits as integral parts of such attempts. (See Hansen 2016 for a discussion of this definition). By this definition, the operational independence of nudges as to regulation is not a formal condition, but an implication. That is, the original definition of a nudge provided by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) is actually a consequence of the more fundamental definition provided here. This is an important point because it means that even though nudges can operate independently from regulation, they are not required to do so.