Digital Nudging

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Business & Information Systems
Engineering
The International Journal of
WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK
ISSN 2363-7005
Bus Inf Syst Eng
DOI 10.1007/s12599-016-0453-1
Digital Nudging
Markus Weinmann, Christoph
Schneider & Jan vom Brocke

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CATCHWORD
Digital Nudging
Markus Weinmann •Christoph Schneider •
Jan vom Brocke
Received: 21 October 2015 / Accepted: 5 August 2016
ÓThe Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Keywords Nudging Information systems design 
Human–computer interaction Online choice architecture
1 Digital Nudging – Guiding Judgment and
Decision-Making in Digital Choice Environments
Digital nudging is the use of user-interface design elements
to guide people’s behavior in digital choice environments.
Digital choice environments are user interfaces – such as
web-based forms and ERP screens – that require people to
make judgments or decisions. Humans face choices every
day, but the outcome of any choice is influenced not only
by rational deliberations of the available options but also
by the design of the choice environment in which infor-
mation is presented, which can exert a subconscious
influence on the outcome. In other words, ‘‘what is chosen
often depends upon how the choice is presented’’ (Johnson
et al. 2012, p. 488) such that the ‘‘choice architecture alters
people’s behavior in a predictable way’’ (Thaler and
Sunstein 2008, p. 6). Even simple modifications of the
choice environment in which options are presented can
influence people’s choices and ‘‘nudge’’ them into behav-
ing in particular ways. In fact, there is no neutral way to
present choices. For example, Johnson and Goldstein
(2003) showed that simply changing default options (from
opt-in to opt-out) in the context of organ donation nearly
doubled the percentage of people who consent to being
organ donors.
Many choices are made in online environments. As the
design of digital choice environments always (either
deliberately or accidentally) influences people’s choices,
understanding the effects of digital nudges in these envi-
ronments can help designers lead users to the most desir-
able choice. For example, the mobile payment app Square
nudges people into giving tips by setting the default to
‘‘tipping’’ so that customers must actively select a ‘‘no
tipping’’ option if they choose not to give a tip. Using this
simple nudge has raised tip amounts, especially where little
or no tipping has been common (Carr 2013). These
examples show that simply changing the default option
affects the outcome.
2 Relevance
The increasing use of digital technologies in large areas of
our private and professional lives means that people fre-
quently make important decisions within digital choice
environments. Most, if not all, online interactions – ranging
from e-government to e-commerce interactions – require
people to make choices.
User interfaces such as Web sites and mobile apps fre-
quently include digital choice environments; likewise,
interfaces of organizational information systems such as
ERP and CRM systems are digital choice environments
that predefine or influence decisions by how the system
Accepted after one revision by Prof. Dr. Sinz.
Dr. M. Weinmann (&)Prof. Dr. J. v. Brocke
Institute of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein,
Fu
¨rst-Franz-Josef-Strasse, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein
e-mail: markus.weinmann@uni.li
Prof. Dr. J. v. Brocke
e-mail: jan.vom.brocke@uni.li
Dr. C. Schneider
Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong
Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
e-mail: christoph.schneider@cityu.edu.hk
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Bus Inf Syst Eng
DOI 10.1007/s12599-016-0453-1

organizes and presents workflows. Since there is no neutral
way to present choices, all decisions related to user-inter-
face design influence users’ behavior (Mandel and Johnson
2002; Sunstein 2015), often regardless of the designers’
intent. A digital choice environment’s design that acci-
dentally influences people’s choices may lead to unin-
tended consequences; therefore, designers must understand
the effects of their designs on users’ choices so they can
choose whether to implement a design that nudges users
deliberately or one that reduces the effects of the design on
users’ choices in order to increase free will.
A key consideration when making such design decisions
is the ethical implications of using nudges. While nudges
should be used to help people make better choices (Thaler
and Sunstein 2008), this is not always the case in practice.
For example, some European low-cost air carriers present
choices of non-essential options in a way that nudges
customers toward purchasing these options. While these
unethical nudges may lead to short term gains for the
company, they may have long-term repercussions in terms
of loss of goodwill, negative publicity, or even legal action.
Therefore, designers must be aware of the ethical impli-
cations of nudges (see Sunstein 2015 for a discussion of
nudging ethics).
3 Current Status
Research on nudging has been conducted primarily in
offline contexts. Whereas traditional economic theory
suggests that human behavior is rational, nudging works
because people do not always behave rationally. In par-
ticular, research in psychology has demonstrated that,
because of their cognitive limitations, people act in
boundedly rational ways (Simon 1955), and various
heuristics and biases influence their decision-making
(Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Heuristics, commonly
defined as simple ‘‘rules of thumb’’ (Hutchinson and
Gigerenzer 2005, p. 98) that people use to ease their cog-
nitive load in making judgments or decisions, can influence
decision-making positively or negatively: They can be
helpful in making simple, recurrent decisions by reducing
the amount of information to be processed so people can
focus on differentiated factors (Evans 2006), reducing
mental effort (Evans 2008). On the other hand, heuristic
thinking can result in cognitive biases and introduce sys-
tematic errors when making complex judgments or deci-
sions (Tversky and Kahneman 1974) that require effortful
thinking (Evans 2006). In such situations, common
heuristics – such as the anchoring and adjustment heuristic
(e.g., using the default values), the availability heuristic
(e.g., being influenced by the vividness of events), and the
representativeness heuristic (i.e., relying on stereotypes)
(Tversky and Kahneman 1974) – affect the evaluation of
alternatives, often leading to suboptimal decisions.
Nudges attempt either to counter or to encourage the use
of heuristics by altering the choice environment to change
people’s behavior. Commonly used nudges include giving
incentives, providing feedback or anchors, and setting
defaults (Dolan et al. 2012; Johnson et al. 2012; Michie
et al. 2013; Thaler and Sunstein 2008; see Table 1).
In various situations, the designers of the choice envi-
ronments (sometimes referred to as ‘‘choice architects’’;
Thaler et al. 2010, p. 1) attempt to influence people’s
choices. For example, many organizations encourage peo-
ple to engage in socially responsible behaviors, such as
leading a healthy life (e-health; e.g., the Fitbit provides
feedback on physical activity), reducing waste or energy
consumption (Green IS; e.g., Nest thermostats provide
feedback on energy consumption), and planning for
retirement (e-finance; e.g., governments set defaults on
retirement options). Likewise, many non-governmental
organizations attempt to encourage people to donate funds,
participate in charitable activities, or vote for particular
outcomes. In an e-commerce context, Web sites often use
opt-in or opt-out mechanisms to nudge users into signing
up for newsletters.
4 Applications of Digital Nudging and Future Trends
4.1 Applications
By definition, digital nudging focuses on guiding the
behavior of individuals, but the effects of digitally nudging
individuals can extend to organizational or societal levels
(see Table 2).
While digital nudging, as described in this article, focuses
on people’s choices in digital choice environments, the
concept can be applied beyond this context, as nudges in
digital environments are increasingly used to influence real-
world behavior. One example is the Fitbit activity monitor,
where digital nudges (e.g., reminding the user to exercise,
giving feedback on activity, presenting friends’ statistics) are
used to nudge people into increasing their activity levels.
4.2 Future Trends
Digital nudging will have a significant impact on future
information systems research and practice, particularly for
design-oriented information systems research. As user
interfaces will always steer people in certain directions
(depending on how information is presented), information
systems designers must understand the behavioral effects
of interface design elements so that digital nudging does
not happen at random and unintended effects do not occur.
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M. Weinmann et al.: Digital Nudging, Bus Inf Syst Eng

Research on digital nudging is likely to evolve into an
important area of design science research, as knowledge
about the behavioral effects of interface-design decisions
on users’ behavior will provide valuable guidance for
improved interface design. New design theories may
evolve that extend knowledge from psychology and
behavioral economics to digital choice environments. As
research on digital nudging is still in its early stages,
clarification of the theoretical mechanisms that underlie
digital nudging is needed, as is the development of theo-
retically based design recommendations to inform research
on persuasive technology (Fogg 2003), particularly the
design of persuasive systems (Oinas-Kukkonen and Har-
jumaa 2009) like behavior-change support systems (Oinas-
Kukkonen 2010).
Because of the ubiquitous digitalization of our private
and professional lives, digital nudging will soon extend to
other application areas as people will use digital devices to
make decisions in more situations and sectors, and the
devices themselves will diversify in form and function.
New devices will emerge with new interaction and
interface design elements, such as kinetics, virtual reality,
and holograms, and designers will need to understand the
potential behavioral effects of these new technologies on
people’s judgment and decision-making.
We encourage our fellow scholars to engage in research
on digital nudging, a fascinating area of information sys-
tems research that bears considerable potential for both
research and society.
5 Further Reading
We suggest the following books for further reading on
offline nudging and the underlying mechanisms: Kahne-
man 2011; Thaler and Sunstein 2008.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://crea
tivecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
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link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.
Table 1 Selection of nudge principles, descriptions, and examples (based on Thaler et al. 2010)
Nudge
principle
Description Example
Incentive Making incentives more salient to increase their
effectiveness
Telephones that are programmed to display the running cost of phone
calls
Understanding
mapping
Mapping information that is difficult to evaluate to
familiar evaluation schemes
Mapping megapixels to maximum printable size instead of pointing to
megapixels when advertising a digital camera
Defaults Preselecting options by setting default options Changing defaults (from opt-in to opt-out) to increase the percentage
of people who consent to being organ donors
Giving
feedback
Providing users with feedback when they are doing
well or making mistakes
Electronic road signs with smiling or sad faces depending on the
vehicle’s speed
Expecting
error
Expecting users to make errors and being as
forgiving as possible
Requiring people at an ATM to retrieve the card before they receive
their money in order to help them avoid forgetting the card
Structure
complex
choices
Listing all the attributes of all the alternatives and
letting people make trade-offs when necessary
Online product configuration systems that make choices simpler by
guiding users through the purchase process
Table 2 Example applications of digital nudging and their effects
Use case/IS field Nudging example/behavior change intervention Effect on organizational or societal level
Business process management Structuring complex input screens Organizational
E-business and e-commerce Displaying limited room inventory during a hotel-booking
process
Organizational
E-finance and insurance Setting defaults for frequently selected insurance plan options Societal
E-government Setting defaults to opt in for organ donation Societal
E-health Step counter app that provides feedback on activity levels Societal
E-learning Reminder to learners to engage with course content Organizational and/or societal
Green IS Smart meters to encourage energy savings Societal
Security and privacy Displaying the strength of selected passwords Organizational and/or societal
Social media Giving incentives, such as badges, for sharing or other activities Societal
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