Low support for nudging among Swedes in a population-representative sample


 Recent surveys in China, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Italy, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the USA, Japan, Hungary, and Denmark indicate that citizens generally are positive toward state nudging. However, less is known about differences in the support for nudging across socio-demographics and political party preferences, a research gap recently identified in the literature. This article investigates the relationship between the support for nudging and trust in public institutions through a population-representative survey in Sweden. It also analyzes differences in the support for nudging across political party preferences in two ideological dimensions: the economic left-right and cultural GAL-TAN spectra. Data were collected in December 2017 through a custom web survey, using Reisch and Sunstein's (2016) questionnaire. The respondents (N = 1032) were representative of the adult population with regard to gender, age, education, job sector, household income, living region, and political party preference. Sweden was found to belong to the cautiously pronudge nations (along with Japan, Hungary, and Denmark), contrary to hypotheses in previous research. Differences in the support for nudging were found along the economic left-right and GAL-TAN spectra. Individual nudges’ variation in support, polarization, and politicization are analyzed and discussed.


Introduction
Nudges are behavioral change techniques designed to help people make better decisions for themselves or society without violating their freedom of choice (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). As a policy tool, they have influenced public administration in many countries (Whitehead et al., 2014;OECD, 2017). There are several academic debates on governmental nudging. One concerns its alignment with citizens' preferences and its effectiveness compared with conventional policy tools (Benartzi et al., 2017;Loewenstein & Chater, 2017, but see Thaler 2017Osman et al., 2020;Weimer, 2020), another its transparency (e.g., Loewenstein et al., 2015;Bang et al., 2018), and a third its public support. One research program has surveyed the support for nudging in the USA (Jung & Mellers, 2016), the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy (Reisch & Sunstein, 2016;Reisch et al., 2017), Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, South Africa, South Korea , Sweden (Hagman et al., 2015(Hagman et al., , 2019, and Flemish Belgium (Sunstein et al., 2019). Sunstein et al. (2018) categorize three levels of nudge support internationally: overwhelmingly pronudge nations (China and South Korea), principled pronudge nations (Brazil, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Italy, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and the USA), and cautiously pronudge nations (Japan, Hungary, and Denmark).
In this article, we address two recent discussions in the literature. One of them concerns the relationship between trust in public institutions and the support for nudging. Previous research has theorized, 'People who have high trust in public institutions would be more willing to accept government nudging' (Sunstein et al., 2019(Sunstein et al., , p. 1423 and has sought to explain international differences in the support for nudging with the same theory . The other discussion is the relationship between political party preferences and the support for nudging. Sunstein et al. (2019) found that left-wing views implied greater support for nudging than right-wing views did, but discovered 'no systematic correlation along approval and party affiliations ' (p. 1423). 1 With this article, we hope to deepen these discussions through an empirical investigation. It will explore the relationship between the support for nudging and citizens' trust in public institutions and their political party preferences. Sunstein et al. (2018) have commented that Denmark paradoxically stands out as a country whose citizens are trustful of public institutions yet relatively unsupportive of nudging. This article will investigate whether that is also the case in its neighboring country, Sweden, an outlier internationally regarding trust in public institutions.
The latest, sixth wave of the World Value Surveys, 2010-2014, reported Swedes' trust in public institutions to be the highest among all countries surveyed. For example, 60% of Swedes (N = 1206) had confidence in government, and 59% had confidence in parliament. In comparison, the corresponding proportions among Americans (N = 2232) were 20% and 33%, respectively.
Sweden's liberal strategy to manage the COVID-19 pandemic has received worldwide attention because of its reliance on mutual trust between the government and the citizens, a strategy that the Swedish government has labeled 'behaviorally informed' and in which nudging has been involved (Almqvist & Andersson, 2020).
Under Sunstein et al.'s (2018) original hypothesis, a relatively high support for nudging would be expected among Swedes. Otherwise, one would be left with two thirds of a Scandinavian puzzle, indicating that high trust in public institutions does not necessarily imply greater support for nudging on a country level. Such a finding would point toward alternate explanations, or a more complex relationship between the two than suggested in the previous literature. 1 In the USA, Republicans are more positive to nudging than Democrats are (Jung & Mellers, 2016), moderated by the choice architect's affiliation (Tannenbaum et al., 2017).
Nudge units can work rather independently of the government, like the Behavioural Insights Team, now a social purpose company part-owned by the UK Cabinet Office (cf., Halpern, 2015). Some citizens may perceive them as outside experts rather than an extension of public institutions. In this article, we, therefore, analyze the relationship between trust in expert technocracy over government and parliament and the support for nudging, using an item from the World Value Survey.
On the relationship between political party preferences and the support for nudging, its systematicityor lack thereofmay depend on how the parties are positioned. In today's politics, there are at least two dimensions according to which parties can be positioned. One is economic: the left-right spectrum. One is cultural: the GAL-TAN spectrum (Hooghe et al., 2002), which contrasts green, alternative, and libertarian (some say postmodern) values with traditional, authoritarian, and nationalistic ones. Through a population-representative survey involving 1032 respondents, this article explores the Swedish multiparty system to consider the possible relationship between political party preferences and the support for nudging through this two-dimensional theoretical framework.
To position the parties across both of these dimensions, we use the results from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Polk et al., 2017), which contains expert ratings of the parties' positions in 31 countries (all European Union members, Norway, Switzerland, and Turkey). As of 2020, there are eight parties in the Swedish parliament. The present, center-left government consists of the Social Democrats (S) and the Green Party (MP), supported by the Center Party (C) and the Liberals (L). The opposition parties are the Left Party (V), the Sweden Democrats (SD), the Christian Democrats (KD), and the Moderate Party (M).
Positioning the parties using the economic left-right and cultural GAL-TAN spectra, three of the four quadrants were represented in parliament: left-GAL, right-GAL, and right-TAN parties (see Table 1). Loibl et al. (2018) have emphasized the need for more studies on the relationship between socio-demographics and differences in the support for nudging within countries, while Sunstein et al. (2019) concluded that 'little evidenceat least outside the U. S.
has yet surfaced about which population groups support nudging and which factors shape those attitudes' (p. 1422). This article addresses those research gaps and makes an empirical contribution by adding to the relatively few studies on the public support for nudging and its relationship to socio-demographics and political party preferences (e.g., Diepeveen et al., 2013;Petrescu et al., 2016;Reisch & Sunstein, 2016;Loibl et al., 2018;Sunstein et al., 2018;Sunstein et al., 2019). It also adds a 16th country -Swedento the catalog of countries surveyed to date using the same instrument.

Method Respondents
An online survey was distributed by a Swedish market research company. Its target population was Swedes between 18 and 79 years of age. The data were collected in December 2017 and were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 25.0. 2 The 2 The data that support the findings of this article are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. sample included 1032 respondents representative of the target population. Their average age was 47.23 years (SD = 16.64). Controls included gender, age, education, job sector, household income, and living region (see Table 2).

Questionnaire
The survey featured an adapted and translated version of a questionnaire developed by Reisch and Sunstein (2016). Respondents were first asked whether they were 'for or against the following hypothetical policy' and then presented 13 nudges in random order (for the nudges, see Table 3). 3 Answers were provided on a binary response scale: 'for' or 'against'. In addition, the respondents answered the following World Value Survey question-statement on the same response scale: 'having experts, not government and parliament, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country'. The respondents were also asked which, if any, political party they would have voted for had it been national elections that same day, a question that 850 (82%) respondents answered by naming a party represented in parliament, while 182 (18%) respondents were undecided or preferred other parties.

Descriptive statistics
On average, the respondents supported 7.44 (SD = 3.21, 95% CI = 7.25, 7.64) out of 13 nudges. The most popular nudgeapproved of by 87%, 95% CI [0.85, 0.89]was an information campaign against child obesity. The least popular nudge - Two of the original nudges were excluded. Onesubliminal advertisingbecause it is illegal in Sweden. The otherenforcing meat-free days in public canteensas it is not a nudge, but a mandate. approved of only by 18%, 95% CI [0.15, 0.20]was a default donation to charity upon tax return (see Table 3). The average percentage support across the nudges was 57%, which, together with a relatively low number of supported nudges per respondent, places Sweden among the cautiously pronudge nations, with an average support on a par with that of Japan, Hungary, and Denmark, but lower than that of the other countries surveyed to date (cf., Sunstein et al., 2018).  (15) Centre Party (C) 119 (12) Left Party (V) 84 (8) Liberals (L) 45 (4) Christian Democrats (KD) 32 (3) Green Party (MP) 31 (3) Other/do not know 182 (18) *1 SEK ≈ 0.1 EUR.

Multivariate analyses
We proceeded with 13 logistic regressions; one per nudge. Like Diepeveen et al. (2013) and Sunstein et al. (2019) before us, but unlike Petrescu et al. (2016), a gender difference was found for several nudges. In comparison with Loibl et al. (2018), a similarity between our results and theirs was the absence of a relationship between living regions and support for the nudges; a difference is that we failed to reproduce the differences across income levels found in their study.
Individual political party preferences were significant predictors of the support for nudging for 10 out of 13 nudges, driven by the left-GAL parties, contributing with 17 out of 29 such significant predictors. What also stands out in our logistic regressions is that the support for expert technocracy emerges as a significant predictor for 10 out of 13 nudges (see Table 5).
Following Loibl et al. (2018), we also derived a controversy proxy from the number of significant predictors per nudge. Across nudges, an average of 5.46 out of 31 (18%) independent variables were statistically significant. 4     turned out to be the sixth and seventh most popular ones: encouraging, alternatively mandating, and consumers into a green energy default. Controversy proved unrelated to the nudges' relative popularity, ρ = −0.031, p = 0.921, ns. We next introduced a subcategory of controversy: politicization, the number of political party preferences as significant predictors, and found that the two most controversial nudges were also the two most politicized ones. Politicization was unrelated to the nudges' relative popularity too, ρ = 0.031, p = 0.920, ns.
As nudges 6 and 7 constituted two thirds of the green nudges (number 11 was the third), we compared the green nudges with the others in terms of controversy and politicization. They were indeed significantly more controversial χ 2 (1, N = 71) = 5.90, p = 0.015 and politicized χ 2 (1, N = 31) = 5.48, p = 0.019 than the others.

Conclusions
This article has investigated the public support for nudging and its relationship with socio-demographics and political party preferences, a research gap recently identified in the literature. One of its findings relates to the relationship between trust in public institutions and the support for nudging. While there is support for nudging in Swedena country with extraordinary trust in public institutionsit turns out to be relatively low (a cautiously pronudge nation), contrary to what previous research has theorized. A new independent variablethe support for expert technocracy over government and parliamentemerged as a significant predictor of support for most individual nudges. These findings complicate the relationship between trust in public institutions and the support for nudging. On a country level, the empirical literature now includes two Scandinavian countries (Sweden and Denmark) where trust in public institutions is very high but the support for nudging is relatively low; and on an individual level, a new predictor that formally runs counter to trust in public institutions.
Another finding relates to the relationship between political party preferences and the support for nudging. Both parametric and nonparametric univariate analyses found significant associations between the support for nudging and political party preferences across the economic left-right and cultural GAL-TAN spectra. Logistic regressions revealed that at least a couple of individual political party preferences at the time, especially for left-GAL parties, were significant predictors of the support for 10 out of 13 nudges. Going forward, we believe the two-dimensional framework used in this article could be a promising way to systemize differences in the support for nudging across political party preferences.
Like Loibl et al. (2018) before us, we speculate that the domestic political debate may have contributed to the individual nudges' controversy and politicization. Green nudges were most controversial and politicized in terms of polarization across socio-demographics and political party preferences. Consistently, environmental issues have been high on the policy agenda in Sweden for the past several years. It is also known from prior research that nudges' support is susceptible to affiliation with the choice architect (Tannenbaum et al., 2017). Accordingly, nudges' polarization, politicization, and support are not static. Surveys of their support are snapshots of moving targets. Much work remains to be done.