Backfiring, reactance, boomerang, spillovers, and rebound effects: Can we learn anything from examples where nudges do the opposite of what they intended?
Magda Osman
Abstract
The academic literature continues to amass a vast amount of empirical work examining the effect of nudges in a variety of contexts designed to improve life style choices in alignment with social policies. In fact, the literature is so vast, there are now meta-analytic studies designed to determine the overall effects of different types of nudges used in a variety of domains (e.g. chronic health, weight management, managing personal finances, pro-environmental behaviours). At the same time, there is also an amassing literature on backfire effects (of which 65 studies are referred to in this article). These are examples where the introduction of a nudge (e.g. a default, social norming, framing, information provision) generates behavioural change in the opposite direction of what was intended. The approach taken here is that there is much that can be learnt from when nudges go wrong, and the insights can be used to indicate where improvements can be made for designing nudges to support better decision-making.