The role of autonomy and reactance for nudging — Experimentally comparing defaults to recommendations and mandates

Abstract

Scholars, policymakers and decisionmakers sometimes criticize behavioral public policies, such as nudges, for undermining behavioral autonomy. We provide evidence from an experiment where participants encountered a recommendation, default value, or mandatory minimum contribution accompanied by varying information on the source, before contributing to climate protection and answering an autonomy-related questionnaire. We find that decisionmakers perceive defaults as more freedom threatening than recommendations and less threatening and angering than mandatory minimum contributions. Intrinsic motivation to protect the climate moderates these differences. An expert, but not the political source reduces threat to freedom and anger. Findings improve our understanding of decisionmakers’ perceptions of nudges relative to other interventions.