The impact on nudge acceptability judgments of framing and consultation of the targeted population

The aim of this article is to better understand how judgments about nudge acceptability are formed and whether they can be manipulated. We conducted a randomized experiment to test whether acceptability judgments could be (i) more favourable when the decision to implement the nudges was made following a consultation with the targeted population and (ii) influenced by the joint framing of the nudge's goal and effectiveness (in terms of an increase in desirable behaviour vs. decrease in undesirable behaviour). We tested these hypotheses on various nudge scenarios and obtained mixed results that do not clearly support our hypotheses. A surprising result that calls for further work is that by mentioning that a nudge had been implemented through a consultation with the targeted population its acceptability could be lowered.