Nudge Theory In Public Policy

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2. Chapter: Nudge Theory applied in the UK 2.1. That is hard to take no notice of the fact that modern politicians are trying to find new ideas and strategies of governance. That caused by the traditional model of "permission and prohibition" of the state that do not bring the desired results. Firstly, the trend towards individualism and the idea of freedom of choice and secondly the increasing distrust and rejection of the «power» policy. That is why there is the need in new policies, that are based on «soft» and less aggressive interventions to appeal to the citizens. Ideas of behavioral economics proved to be extremely interesting for active politicians in many countries (the USA, the UK, Australia, France), and from different parts…show more content…
The primary challenge was to collect a large number of laboratory and real-world mental shortcuts into a shortlist, which was decent and comprehensive enough to be used as a policy tool and guide for policymakers. It was intended to broaden the policy tools and approaches that could be utilized to achieve public policy goals, from better population health, paying taxes on time, etc (Dolan et al. 2010). The Cabinet Office have introduced quite innovative approach for creating «nudges». They have presented a so called «check list», with the help of which government can create a proper «nudge». The authors of MINDSPACE claim that there are nine most robust influences on peoples’ behavior : messenger, incentives, norms, defaults, salience, priming, affect, commitments and…show more content…
As the authors say « we go with the flow of pre-set options.» (Cabinet Office 2010). This idea was one of the major points in Nudge Theory. Most of studies in behaviorism show that people are more likely to behave in a lazy way and they would rather choose to leave a pre-selected option than to put an effort to change it. The following category is Salience. People pay their attention to what is novel and seems to be relevant to them. So, when people are making choice, they pay apportion to the most accessible and noticeable option. Also while making choice, people look for the «anchors», that means that people such for something familiar, for things that have seen or heard before. The following category is Priming. This is when the acts are influenced by sub-conscious cues. Here, the authors of MINDSPACE show that people do not usually pay attention to things that are happening around them, but are affected by the unconsciously. For instance, the study shows that the visitors of canteen are more likely to keep their table clean when they feel a smell of all-purpose cleaner that was defused in the canteen (Dolan et al. 2010). Such behavioral insight, in the authors’ opinion, should be used by the government for influencing the behavior of people in the framework of paying
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