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Nudging would look like this (excuse the politics, it's just the most immediate source of examples): people who are up to date on their vaccinations may get per

Nudging would look like this (excuse the politics, it's just the most immediate source of examples): people who are up to date on their vaccinations may get perks and be allowed to enter certain venues just by showing their card, while everyone else gets no perks and has to pay for testing to enter venues or are barred entirely. Another example: instead of regulating testing for travel, allow third party companies to manage official testing certificates and set their own prices. This happened in the UK, where Covid tests were free from the government unless you wanted to travel - at which point you had to pay a private clinic upwards of £50 (sometimes more like £150) to get a 24 hour pass. Nudging looks very much like incentives and restrictions in a mobile game.

cal85 4y ago
I think your examples are explicit incentives, not nudges. From what I’ve read, a nudge is typically something much subtler that works on an emotional level. For example the tax office might A/B test different wording for a tax demand letter template, finding that it’s more effective to say “Get a £100 early-filing discount if you pay before $DATE” instead of “An additional £100 late-filing penalty will be charged if you fail to pay before $DATE”. A strict logician or economist might point out they amount to the same thing, but the different emotional approach nonetheless makes a measurable difference in the aggregate response. That’s what is usually meant by a nudge.
- prohobo 4y ago
  That would simply be PR or friendly copy. The implementation of nudge in your example would be to create the "discount" itself to push more people to pay taxes on time. Even then, in your example everyone already understands and agrees with the rules of "pay a fee for being late" because it's such a common practice and is rational. Nudges don't need to be rational - at least not directly. They need to push people to do what you want them to do to attain some opaque goal. Similar to dark patterns, nudging is not about creating reasonable guides for people to follow, it's about making them feel less contempt for being shoehorned into taking actions they'd otherwise prefer not to. Maybe people don't want to pay taxes, but the proverbial "we" decided long ago that taxes are a necessity to maintain the state and so we punish people with prison time for cheating on them. In nudging, "we" don't choose anything, the institution quietly forces our hand without any democratic process.

cal85 4y ago

I think your examples are explicit incentives, not nudges. From what I’ve read, a nudge is typically something much subtler that works on an emotional level. For example the tax office might A/B test different wording for a tax demand letter template, finding that it’s more effective to say “Get a £100 early-filing discount if you pay before $DATE” instead of “An additional £100 late-filing penalty will be charged if you fail to pay before $DATE”. A strict logician or economist might point out they amount to the same thing, but the different emotional approach nonetheless makes a measurable difference in the aggregate response. That’s what is usually meant by a nudge.

prohobo 4y ago
That would simply be PR or friendly copy. The implementation of nudge in your example would be to create the "discount" itself to push more people to pay taxes on time. Even then, in your example everyone already understands and agrees with the rules of "pay a fee for being late" because it's such a common practice and is rational. Nudges don't need to be rational - at least not directly. They need to push people to do what you want them to do to attain some opaque goal. Similar to dark patterns, nudging is not about creating reasonable guides for people to follow, it's about making them feel less contempt for being shoehorned into taking actions they'd otherwise prefer not to. Maybe people don't want to pay taxes, but the proverbial "we" decided long ago that taxes are a necessity to maintain the state and so we punish people with prison time for cheating on them. In nudging, "we" don't choose anything, the institution quietly forces our hand without any democratic process.