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The Rise of The Nudge Unit
The fastest way to explain Nudge Theory is by citing an example like this:
Putting healthy food at eye level is a Nudge, banning junk food is not.
Government Nudge Units
Nudge Theory has come into popularity recently with governments across the globe thanks to years of work put in by economics, psychology, evolutionary, and legal scholars. A Nudge Unit within governments uses insights from the behavioral sciences to influence the creation or modification of public policy.
Nudge Units in government are great because they invite everyone in power to step back from their spreadsheets and take a deep breath to examine reality.
The Behavioral Insights Team (BI.team) out of the UK was arguably the first formal government-led Nudge Unit, and they have achieved incredible success in a really short period of time. Their mission statement is:
“We generate and apply behavioural insights to inform policy, improve public services, and deliver positive results for people and communities.” -BI Team
Nudging works well in government settings because in general Nudge-based interventions should be inexpensive and easy to implement. The goal of a Nudge is to make doing the right thing as simple as possible.
Government-led Nudge Units are great at using low-cost creative approaches to drive public policy and influence citizen behavior in the right direction.
In one project, a government-led Nudge Unit addressed the issue of saving for retirement simply by switching the process for enrollment. “By automatically enrolling people into retirement savings plans from which they can easily opt out, people who always meant to join a plan but never got around to it will have more comfortable retirements.”¹
In a separate project, the BI Team was asked to see if they could Nudge UK citizens into paying their Excise Tax on time. The BI Team tested out a number of interventions and they found that the most effective effort was simply adding a photo of the…
