Low support for nudging among Swedes in a population-representative sample

Abstract

Abstract Recent surveys in China, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Italy, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the USA, Japan, Hungary, and Denmark indicate that citizens generally are positive toward state nudging. However, less is known about differences in the support for nudging across socio-demographics and political party preferences, a research gap recently identified in the literature. This article investigates the relationship between the support for nudging and trust in public institutions through a population-representative survey in Sweden. It also analyzes differences in the support for nudging across political party preferences in two ideological dimensions: the economic left-right and cultural GAL-TAN spectra. Data were collected in December 2017 through a custom web survey, using Reisch and Sunstein's (2016) questionnaire. The respondents (N = 1032) were representative of the adult population with regard to gender, age, education, job sector, household income, living region, and political party preference. Sweden was found to belong to the cautiously pronudge nations (along with Japan, Hungary, and Denmark), contrary to hypotheses in previous research. Differences in the support for nudging were found along the economic left-right and GAL-TAN spectra. Individual nudges’ variation in support, polarization, and politicization are analyzed and discussed.