Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
Article
  • Access

Putting the public back in behavioral public policy

  • PATRICIA DE JONGE (a1), MARCEL ZEELENBERG (a2) and PEETER W.J. VERLEGH (a3)

Abstract

Behavioral public policies are aimed at influencing the behavior of the public in a way that is advantageous for the public itself and within the law. Sanders, Snijders and Hallsworth (2018, this issue) summarize the state of the art of this new field of study and introduce a number of challenges and opportunities for the time to come. We address an additional challenge that is present and central in all attempts to influence behavior, namely the public – the people that are the target of behavioral public policies. We review evidence revealing that people do not passively accept those influence attempts, but often show reactant responses. We propose that the Persuasion Knowledge Model provides a framework both to understand the reactions of the public and to facilitate communication between academic researchers and practitioners.

  • View HTML

      • Send article to Kindle

      To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

      Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

      Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

      Putting the public back in behavioral public policy
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Dropbox

      To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

      Putting the public back in behavioral public policy
      Available formats
      ×

      Send article to Google Drive

      To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

      Putting the public back in behavioral public policy
      Available formats
      ×

Copyright

COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Corresponding author

*Correspondence to: Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. Email: Marcel@uvt.nl

References

Hide All
Arad, A. and Rubinstein, A. (2017), The people's perspective on libertarian-paternalistic policies. Retrieved from http://www.tau.ac.il/~aradayal/LP.pdf.
Benartzi, S., Beshears, J., Milkman, K. L., Sunstein, C. R., Thaler, R. H., Shankar, M. and Galing, S. (2017), ‘Should governments invest more in nudging?’ Psychological Science, 28(8): 1041–1055. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617702501.
Brehm, J. W. (1966), A theory of psychological reactance. Oxford, England: Academic Press.
Brehm, J. and Brehm, S. (1981), Psychological reactance. A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.
Campbell, M. C. and Kirmani, A. (2008), ‘I know what you're doing and why you're doing it: The use of persuasion knowledge model in consumer research’, In Haugtvedt, C. P., Herr, P. M. and Kardes, F. R. (Eds.), Handbook of consumer psychology (pp. 549–574). New York: Taylor & Francis Group
Clee, M. A. and Wicklund, R. A. (1980), ‘Consumer Behavior and Psychological Reactance’, Journal of Consumer Research, 6(4): 389–405.
Diepeveen, S., Ling, T., Suhrcke, M., Roland, M. and Marteau, T. M. (2013), ‘Public acceptability of government intervention to change health-related behaviours: a systematic review and narrative synthesis’, BMC Public Health, 13(1): 756. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-756.
Felsen, G., Castelo, N. and Reiner, P. B. (2013), ‘Decisional enhancement and autonomy: public attitudes towards overt and covert nudges’, Judgment and Decision Making, 8(3): 202–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416674007.
Friestad, M. and Wright, P. (1994), ‘The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts’, Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380.
Hedlin, S. and Sunstein, C. R. (2016), ‘Does active choosing promote green energy use? Experimental Evidence’, Ecology Law Quarterly, 43(1): 107–141. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2624359.
Jachimowicz, J. M., Duncan, S. and Weber, E. U. (2017), When and why defaults influence decisions: A meta-analysis of default effects. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2727301.
Jung, J. Y. and Mellers, B. A. (2016), ‘American attitudes toward nudges’, Judgment and Decision Making, 11(1): 62–74. Retrieved from http://ideas.repec.org/a/jdm/journl/v11y2016i1p62-74.html.
Krijnen, J., Tannenbaum, D. and Fox, C. R. (2018), ‘Choice Architecture 2.0: Behavioral policy as a social interaction’, Behavioral Science & Policy. In press.
Loewenstein, G., Bryce, C., Hagmann, D. and Rajpal, S. (2014), ‘Warning: You are about to be nudged’. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2417383.
Pavey, L. and Sparks, P. (2009), ‘Reactance, autonomy and paths to persuasion: Examining perceptions of threats to freedom and informational value’, Motivation and Emotion, 33(3): 277–290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-009-9137-1.
Petrescu, D. C., Hollands, G. J., Couturier, D. L., Ng, Y. L. and Marteau, T. M. (2016), ‘Public acceptability in the UK and USA of nudging to reduce obesity: The example of reducing sugar-sweetened beverages consumption’, PLoS ONE, 11(6): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155995.
Rains, S. A. (2013), ‘The nature of psychological reactance revisited: A meta-analytic review’, Human Communication Research, 39(1): 47–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2012.01443.x.
Rebonato, R. (2014), ‘A critical assessment of libertarian paternalism’, Journal of Consumer Policy, 37(3): 357–396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-014-9265-1.
Reisch, L. A. and Sunstein, C. (2016), ‘Do Europeans like nudges’? Judgment and Decision Making, 11(4): 310–325. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
Reiter, P. L., McRee, A. L., Pepper, J. K. and Brewer, N. T. (2012), ‘Default policies and parents’ consent for school-located HPV vaccination’, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 35(6): 651–657. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-012-9397-1.
Sanders, M., Snijders, V. and Hallsworth, M. (2018), ‘Behavioural science and policy: where are we now and where are we going?’ Behavioural Public Policy, 2(2): 144–167.
Steffel, M., Williams, E. F. and Pogacar, R. (2016), ‘Ethically deployed defaults: Transparency and consumer protection through disclosure and preference articulation’, Journal of Marketing Research, 53(5): 865–880. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0421.
Sunstein, C. R. (2017), ‘Nudges that fail’, Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1): 4–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2016.3.
Tannenbaum, D., Fox, C. R. and Rogers, T. (2017), ‘On the misplaced politics of behavioural policy interventions’, Nature Human Behaviour, 1(7): 130. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0130.
Wright, P. (1986), ‘Presidential Address Schemer schema: consumers’ intuitive theories about marketers’ influence tactics’. In Lutz, R. J. (Ed.), Advances in Consumer Research, 13 (pp. 1–3). Provo, UT: ACR. Retrieved from http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/5947/volumes/v13/NA-13.
  • Access

Putting the public back in behavioral public policy

  • PATRICIA DE JONGE (a1), MARCEL ZEELENBERG (a2) and PEETER W.J. VERLEGH (a3)

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Abstract views

Total abstract views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between <date>. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed