Reporting on one's behavior:
a survey experiment on the nonvalidity of self-reported COVID-19 hygiene-relevant routine behaviors
Pelle Guldborg Hansen & Erik Gahner Larsen &
​Caroline Gundersen ​
​Surveys based on self-reported hygiene-relevant routine behaviors have played a crucial role in policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, using anchoring to test validity in a randomized controlled survey experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we demonstrate that asking people to self-report on the frequency of routine behaviors are prone to significant measurement error and systematic bias. Specifically, we find that participants across age, gender, and political allegiance report higher (lower) frequencies of COVID-19-relevant behaviors when provided with a higher (lower) anchor. The results confirm that such self-reports should not be regarded as behavioral data and should primarily be used to inform policy decisions if better alternatives are not available. To this end, we discuss the use of anchoring as a validity test relative to self-reported behaviors as well as viable alternatives to self-reports when seeking to behaviorally inform policy decisions.

Tools and Ethics for Applied Behavioural Insights: The BASIC Toolkit
OECD Publishing

The application of Behavioural Insights in Public Policy, i.e. Behavioural Public Policy, has definitely come to stay. Reports such as MINDSPACE, EAST and Test, Learn and Adapt as well as the case collection Behavioural Insights and Public Policy published by the OECD has spurred the interest and motivation of public policy makers and behavioural scientists alike. 
​Little, beyond inspiration, has, however, been written about how to actually apply Behavioural Insights in Public Policy; that is, about the processes, tools and challenges through which a BI-project usually progresses. In particular, almost nothing has been written about how BI-specialists approach a policy issue in behavioural terms, as well as identifies suitable Behavioural Insights to apply in order to ensure an effective and responsible policy intervention.

​The framework BASIC is a result of almost 10 years of work with Behavioural Insights, that Pelle Guldborg Hansen has carried out as part of his university research and the work at iNudgeyou.

Making Healthy Choices Easier: Regulation versus Nudging
Pelle Guldborg Hansen & Laurits Rohden Skov & 
​Katrine Lund Skov

In recent years, the nudge approach to behavior change has emerged from the behavioral sciences to challenge the traditional use of regulation in public health strategies to address modifiable individual-level behaviors related to the rise of noncommunicable diseases and their treatment. However, integration and testing of the nudge approach as part of more comprehensive public health strategies aimed at making healthy choices easier are being threatened by inadequate understandings of its scientific character, its relationship with regulation, and its ethical implications. This article reviews this character and its ethical implication with a special emphasis on the compatibility of nudging with traditional regulation, special domains of experience, and the need for a more nuanced approach to the ethical debate. The aim is to advance readers' understanding and give guidance to those who have considered working with or incorporating the nudge approach into programs or policies aimed at making healthful choices easier.

The Definition of Nudge and Libertarian Paternalism: Does the Hand Fit the Glove?
​Pelle Guldborg Hansen ​​

In recent years the concepts of ‘nudge’ and ‘libertarian paternalism’ have become popular theoretical as well as practical concepts inside as well as outside academia. But in spite of the widespread interest, confusion reigns as to what exactly is to be regarded as a nudge and how the underlying approach to behaviour change relates to libertarian paternalism. This paper sets out to improve the clarity and value of the definition of nudge by reconciling it with its theoretical foundations in behavioural economics. In doing so it not only explicates the relationship between nudges and libertarian paternalism, but also clarifies how nudges relate to incentives and information, and may even be consistent with the removal of certain types of choices. In the end we are left with a revised definition of the concept of nudge that allows for consistently categorising behaviour change interventions as such and that places them relative to libertarian paternalism.

Nudge and the Manipulation of Choice: A Framework for the Responsible Use of the Nudge Approach to Behaviour Change in Public Policy
Pelle Guldborg Hansen & Andreas Maaløe Jespersen

In Nudge (2008) Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggested that public policy-makers arrange decision-making contexts in ways to promote behaviour change in the interest of individual citizens as well as that of society. However, in the public sphere and Academia alike widespread discussions have appeared concerning the public acceptability of nudgebased behavioural policy. Thaler and Sunstein’s own position is that the anti-nudge position is a literal non-starter, because citizens are always influenced by the decision making context anyway, and nudging is liberty preserving and acceptable if guided by Libertarian Paternalism and Rawls’ publicity principle. A persistent and central tenet in the criticism disputing the acceptability of the approach is that nudging works by manipulating citizens’ choices. In this paper, we argue that both lines of argumentation are seriously flawed. We show how the anti-nudge position is not a literal non-starter due to the
​responsibilities that accrue on policy-makers by the intentional intervention in citizens’ life, how nudging is not essentially liberty preserving and why the approach is not necessarily acceptable even if satisfying Rawls’ publicity principle.