Do minorities like nudges? The role of group norms in attitudes towards behavioral policy

Eyal Pe’Er; Yuval Feldman; Eyal Gamliel; Limor Sahar; Ariel Tikotsky; Nurit Hod; Hilla Schupak

Do minorities like nudges? The role of group norms in attitudes towards behavioral policy

Eyal Pe’Er^*, Yuval Feldman, Eyal Gamliel, Limor Sahar, Ariel Tikotsky, Nurit Hod, Hilla Schupak

^*Corresponding author for this work

Federmann School of Public Policy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Attitudes of public groups towards behavioral policy interventions (or nudges) can be important for both the policy makers who design and deploy nudges, and to researchers who try to understand when and why some nudges are supported while others are not. Until now, research on public attitudes towards nudges has focused on either state- or country-level comparisons, or on correlations with individual-level traits, and has neglected to study how different social groups (such as minorities) might view nudges. Using a large and representative sample, we tested the attitudes of two distinct minority groups in Israel (Israeli Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews), and discovered that nudges that operated against a minority group’s held social norms, promoting a more general societal goal not aligned with the group’s norms, were often less supported by minorities. Contrary to expectations, these differences could not be explained by differences in trust in the government applying these nudges. We discuss implications for public policy and for the research and applications of behavioral interventions.

Original language	American English
Pages (from-to)	40-50
Number of pages	11
Journal	Judgment and Decision Making
Volume	14
Issue number	1
State	Published - Jan 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The study was conducted with the financial support of the Israel Democracy Institute. We thank Geo-Cartography Knowledge Group for their services in data collection, and to Ms. Yuval Aisenmen for her assistance in the project. We also wish to thank Daphna Aviram-Nitsan and Omer Selivansky for their helpful comments. Copyright: © 2019. The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. ∗School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Email: eyal.peer@mail.huji.ac.il. †Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University. ‡Behavioral Sciences Department, Ruppin Academic Center. §Graduate School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University. ¶School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019. The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Keywords

Behavioral policy
Group norm
Minorities
Nudge

Cite this

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Do minorities like nudges? The role of group norms in attitudes towards behavioral policy

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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