Unexplored Issues in the Ethics of Nudges

Since the publication of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Thaler and Sunstein, nudges have become widely used tools in policymakers' toolkits.1 In parallel, beginning with Bovens's early reflections, scholars have debated the conditions, if any, under which the use of such unconventional policy instruments can be considered ethically legitimate.2 This special issue seeks to advance this ongoing ethical debate with the convictions that greater conceptual clarity is needed and that several important ethical concerns have remained underexplored so far. In particular, it investigates foundational concepts, such as preferences and inequality, that shape the ethical evaluation of nudging, highlighting how their definition and interpretation bear directly on both normative judgments and policy design. On the one hand, understanding what constitutes the relevant preference in a given context is crucial for addressing the ethical dimension of how nudging interacts with autonomy. First, the epistemological standards used to determine how preferences should be formed bear relation to which mental states are regarded as legitimate reasons for action, reasons that, in turn, underpin the attribution of autonomous agency, including in choice environments shaped by nudges. Second, for a nudge to be autonomy-preserving, it must not impede the agent's ability to act in accordance with their pertinent preference. Ensuring this requires clearly defined methodological criteria and normative assumptions for identifying what those preferences are. On the other hand, assessing the fairness of nudges demands a normative account of what constitutes a just distribution of benefits and burdens. Without such an account, there is a risk that nudges (regardless of whether they are well-intentioned) may reinforce existing structural inequalities in ways that remain insufficiently scrutinized or even entirely unnoticed. Refining our understanding of these concepts is therefore essential. Equally crucial is the expansion of ethical analysis to include two often-overlooked axes of analysis. First, attention must be directed toward the specific contexts in which nudges are implemented, since these not only shape the ethical issues at stake but also determine the extent to which such issues are cause for concern. For example, in contexts where technology is deeply embedded in everyday practices, such technologies may function as factors that either exacerbate or mitigate ethical concerns, depending on their design and situated use.3 Second, ethical inquiry should also address alternative policy strategies to nudges, some of which have remained largely understudied and have so far eluded thorough ethical scrutiny. Considering these alternatives is essential for a well-rounded assessment of the desirability of nudges relative to their potential substitutes. Attending to these often-neglected lines of ethical investigation fosters a more comprehensive understanding and critical reassessment of the desirability of nudges as policy tools, an approach that is more attuned to context and less prone to treating nudging as universally appropriate or desirable. We also believe that it would be revealing to appraise nudges in the light of non-Western ethical frameworks, which typically do not prize autonomy, but this will have to be done on another occasion. This special issue explores uncharted territory in the ethics of nudging through four original contributions, each of which advances the debate by engaging with aspects of the underexplored issues outlined above. The articles were selected from presentations delivered at a workshop on ‘The Ethics and Effectiveness of Nudges’, part of the Braga Meetings organized by the Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society (CEPS), and held in June 2022 at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal. First, Viviana Ponce de León's article is notable for expanding the ethical discourse on nudging by bringing attention to the experiences of vulnerable populations.4 Rather than limiting the analysis to individual-level concerns such as agency and personal freedom, it examines the broader impact of nudges on different social groups, thereby shifting the ethical focus toward the crucial issue of equity. Ponce de León highlights that, although nudges are often celebrated as low-cost and efficient policy tools, this perceived efficiency can obscure significant ethical risks arising from heterogeneous responses across populations. In particular, she underscores the disparities that emerge when nudges are less effective for certain groups, potentially exacerbating the wellbeing gap between low-SES (socioeconomic status) individuals and more advantaged segments of society. This analysis raises important questions of distributive justice and highlights the risk that behaviorally informed interventions, if not designed with social heterogeneity in mind, may reinforce structural inequalities and lead to uneven policy outcomes. Even when nudges appear more effective for low-SES groups, ethical concerns persist, as this effectiveness may stem from the fact that such populations face greater difficulty in resisting or avoiding interventions that conflict with their preferences or best interests. This heightened vulnerability can impose additional burdens, particularly when aligning with the nudge requires navigating material or structural barriers not encountered by more privileged individuals. Second, Lukas Fuchs introduces an often-overlooked policy strategy by exploring the ethical and practical implications of adding options.5 His article stands out for examining a frequently neglected alternative to nudging, namely, the expansion of the choice set, and for highlighting its ethical advantages over more conventional policy tools such as bans, incentives, and even nudges themselves. While nudges reshape the choice architecture without eliminating existing options, Fuchs advocates for the deliberate inclusion of new ones as a distinct form of intervention. He situates this approach within the framework of republican paternalism, in contrast to the more commonly discussed libertarian paternalism. Republican paternalism begins from the premise that individuals' choices are often constrained by an insufficient set of meaningful alternatives. From this standpoint, policy should aim to improve decision-making conditions by expanding the range of viable options, thereby supporting individuals in the pursuit of their own goals. Fuchs compares nudging and option-adding across five key ethical dimensions: autonomy, transparency, reversibility, effectiveness, and efficiency, and argues that option-adding holds a comparative advantage on each front. Although this point lies somewhat beyond the article's immediate focus, Fuchs also gestures toward a promising direction for future research: how the addition of options might influence choice via quasi-automatic cognitive mechanisms such as the decoy effect.6 In such scenarios, the added option may not be intended for selection, but rather serves to alter the perceived attractiveness of the existing alternatives. These subtle shifts in decision-making reveal the need for a more nuanced normative evaluation of option-adding, one that warrants further exploration. Third, in their article, Bart Engelen and Viktor Ivanković examine the concept of ‘true preferences’ and its central role in the ethical justification of paternalist nudges.7 These psychologically informed interventions aim to promote individuals' interests and wellbeing without eliminating any existing alternatives. They are particularly relevant in cases of an intention–behavior gap, where individuals fail to act in line with their endorsed goals due to factors such as akrasia or craving. The legitimacy of such interventions hinges on the assumption that it is possible to identify what people genuinely want, that is, their true preferences. The article refines our understanding of which preferences can meaningfully be considered ‘true’. Engelen and Ivanković develop a higher-order, values-based account of preference, rejecting the equation of true preferences with ideally rational ones, namely, the hypothetical preferences of perfectly rational agents (so-called ‘Econs’). They argue that this idealized model is both descriptively implausible and normatively unhelpful for real-world decision-making, which is the proper domain for policy and ethical evaluation. In doing so, they reinforce the case for paternalist nudges by showing that many standard objections to true preferences rely on exaggerated or unrealistic assumptions. Moreover, they persuasively argue that abandoning the notion of true preferences threatens our ability to make sense of key normative values, such as autonomy and authenticity. To address ongoing critiques, Engelen and Ivanković distinguish three types of objections to true preferences: ontological (do they exist?), epistemic (can they be known?), and normative (should they guide interventions?). By disaggregating these concerns, they avoid treating critical perspectives as monolithic and instead provide a nuanced and constructive defense of the concept. Finally, Stefano Calboli shifts the conversation on technology and nudging by complementing the prevailing risk-centered narrative with a forward-looking exploration of technological opportunities.8 His article highlights the potential of emerging technologies, such as apps, Internet of Things devices, wearables, virtual assistants, and augmented reality, to address two of the most pressing ethical challenges associated with nudging. The first, the misalignment issue, concerns the risk that nudges may create a disconnect between an individual's will and their actual behavior. The second, the obliviousness issue, involves the difficulty nudgees encounter in accessing the information necessary to understand and evaluate the intervention. Calboli argues that these technologies can serve as crucial facilitators of information access. First, they reduce the cognitive friction involved in retrieving relevant information that is not readily present in the choice environment. Second, they enhance the salience of information that is available but often overlooked. In doing so, such tools may provide vital support in mitigating both ethical concerns. This insight contributes to a more nuanced and balanced ethical assessment of technology in the context of nudging, one that resists the tendency to focus exclusively on risks while overlooking the potential for these tools to strengthen ethical safeguards. Taken together, these articles significantly broaden the scope of ethical analysis of nudges, offering critical insights into foundational questions concerning their moral legitimacy. Ponce de León's contribution sharpens our understanding of the ethical challenges posed by nudges at the societal level. Fuchs's article prompts a reconsideration of their ethical desirability by introducing the possibility of alternative policy strategies. Engelen and Ivanković provide a robust defense of the notion of true preferences, while Calboli's work foregrounds the intersection between nudge ethics and emerging technologies. Each of these contributions is valuable in its own right. Yet their significance extends beyond the specific dimensions they address. Collectively, they have the potential to influence the broader debate on behavioral public policy, fostering a more nuanced, comprehensive, and context-sensitive ethical evaluation of the various approaches used within behaviorally informed interventions. Refining the point, Ponce de León's article highlights the need to explore the personalization of nudges through the lens of equity. Drawing on Mills's distinction,9 she focuses in particular on ‘means personalization’, that is, tailoring the delivery of nudges to ensure consistent effects across different population groups. At least at first glance, such an approach appears promising as a way to promote equity through personalization. When it comes to ‘choice personalization’, namely, the personalization of the target behavior itself, Engelen and Ivanković's arguments become especially relevant. This form of personalization relies on the identification of ‘true preferences’ and on how these can be distinguished from the broader set of an individual's preferences. Fuchs's work, in turn, invites consideration of an additional policy alternative: the strategy of adding an option. This strategy may, as discussed by Fuchs, operate independently of behavioral and cognitive science insights, or it may incorporate them, an extension not directly addressed in his article, but one that naturally follows from his framework. Its normative desirability should be assessed not only in relation to nudging, but also in comparison with other behaviorally informed tools aimed at restoring agency, such as debiasing, nudge plus, and boosts.10 Finally, Calboli's article suggests the urgent need to examine the ethical and practical implications of what policymakers and institutions must do – or delegate to others – in order to foster the development of technologies that enhance the ethical quality of nudges.11 This line of inquiry raises important questions about which strategies should be adopted to support the development and responsible deployment of such technologies when applied to nudge decision-makers, an area that remains largely unexplored. What emerges is that the ethical analyses presented in the articles included in this special issue extend beyond the immediate boundaries of their respective topics, contributing meaningfully to broader debates within contemporary behavioral public policy. This, in itself, attests to the special issue's wider significance and relevance.