Nudging as an Instrument of Consumer Policy

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Economics - Micro-economics, grade: 1,5, University of Hohenheim, course: Verbraucherpolitik, language: English, abstract: How can nudge apply in policies that attracts people consume sustainable? This is the main research question we discuss in this paper. First, we focus on a conceptualization of nudging and toolkits, then bring the theoretic tools into practical cases, which present concrete examples of nudging.

Behavioral economics has evolved and seems to show consistent patterns that are not easily reconciled with the axioms of behavior in neoclassical economics. Thus, it is an instrumental way to apply behavioral economics, which brings social psychology into policy making. Nudge, one of the policy instruments, helps enhance or improve the implementation of legislation and regulations, or even substitute traditional policies. Nudging influences behavior towards specific outcomes without forcing any changing values of people. However, there are still limitations of nudge that are ineffectiveness, inefficiency and the lack of evidences.