Making and unmaking evidence: The ethics of using nudge
Dr Colette Einfeld has recently published Knowledge, Evidence, and Policymaking: Behavioural Sciences in Australia, drawing on her PhD about nudge and behavioural science. Here she explains how she came across the concept of nudging, her increasingly questioning approach to the field, and the book’s main arguments.
I was working as a public health researcher when I came across the theory of nudge. The book Nudge, which popularised the concept, was released in 2008 by academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The approach ‘nudges’ people towards a choice by changing the decision-making environment. Policy actors become “choice architects” designing the nudge. The impetus behind the approach is that people are subject to cognitive biases and heuristics that affect the way they make choices. For example, when making a decision about whether or not to have a surgery, people will respond differently if the information is presented as “90% of people are alive five years after surgery” rather than “10% of people are dead five years after surgery” (Kuehnhanss 2018). Governments, advocates argue, should both recognise and use biases when designing public policy.
As an enthusiastic public health researcher, I was smitten. Here, I thought, was an approach which could help people become healthier, but still ensured they were free to eat their favourite chocolate bar. Yet, as I continued to read about nudge, I also discovered the negative commentary and criticism that nudge was manipulative and ineffective. I began to look at how nudge was enacted in behavioural insights teams throughout the world. So, in 2014, I began my research exploring nudging and behavioural insights in public policy in Australia.
Over the years of study, Nudges and the behavioural sciences remained a focus of government activity and received a resurgence of interest from administrations during COVID. This was because, before vaccines, action to control the spread of COVID were often framed as behavioural, such as social distancing, mask wearing, and hand washing. Attention turned to nudge as a way of encouraging these behaviours without regulations.
Knowledge, Evidence, and Policymaking: Behavioural Sciences in Australia
I have recently written a book on my research. The book is a critical reflection on over ten years of studying the practices of nudging and behavioural insights. I write about how knowledges and evidence are used, as well as how knowledge becomes evidence.
In my practitioner work, I would hear a story or a statistic from different parts of the organisation that, in time, would become evidence for a program or project. I observed this in my research and was curious how a story, data, or information, becomes listened to, advocated for and influential in policy processes.
I found that policy actors make and seek to unmake evidence in contests for policy authority and legitimacy. Examples of the ‘making of evidence’ were found when policy actors seek to link knowledge to values important in the public service. For example, the scientific foundations of nudge were emphasised to enhance its legitimacy as an evidence-based policy approach, and statistical results from randomised control trials were linked to dollar amounts saved to align nudging with efficiency paradigms. I talk about this making (and unmaking) of evidence in my book, arguing that it is a way to grow policy authority and the legitimacy of behavioural insights.
And the types of evidence that gain traction matter. This is because it shapes the way we address and understand policy problems. For example, the act of approaching a policy problem from the standpoint or lens of behaviour leads to the framing of all policy problems as behavioural, with some participants noting all governments do is to try and change behaviour. This position, however, draws attention away from the role of context and structures in problems. For example, behavioural insights may frame poverty as a problem of decision making, providing a justification for not addressing structural causes of poverty and moving attention and resources away from these causes (Fine et al. 2016).
The way policy actors use evidence in behavioural insights has implications beyond one project or process but this also applies to academics. Academics also advocate for the use of behavioural sciences, to claim authority in policy processes, and this advocacy can provide instrumental benefits, as we partner with government. But academics also have responsibility, as I argue in my book, “to facilitate robust debates on the ethics of using behavioural sciences and innovative policy approaches in general”. Paying attention to the impact of how we make and use evidence in policy making is vital for all policy actors.