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Do people really want to be nudged towards healthy lifestyles?

Robert Sugden

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

90 Citations (Scopus)
35 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper assesses Thaler and Sunstein’s claim that policies that nudge individuals towards healthy lifestyles promote the welfare of those individuals, as judged by themselves. I argue that Thaler and Sunstein switch between two different interpretations of that clause. One interpretation gives the clause a wide range of applicability, but drains it of its content as a repudiation of paternalism. The other interpretation makes it more meaningful to say that people want to make the choices they are being nudged towards, but applies to a much narrower range of cases than Thaler and Sunstein have in mind.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)113–123
Number of pages11
JournalInternational Review of Economics
Volume64
Issue number2
Early online date20 Sept 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2017

Keywords

  • nudges
  • health
  • paternalism
  • self-control

Access to Document

  • Published manuscript

    This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

    Final published version, 398 KBLicence: CC BY

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