Description
Despite reported success of nudge interventions on influencing behaviour in the public health domain, there have been cases where nudges fail to work as intended. Such findings hold importance, especially during high-stakes situations like the COVID-19 pandemic where governments implemented public health safety measures to combat the spread of the virus. This systematic review investigated the conditions that cause healthcare nudges to result in unintended or negative outcomes in the context of the pandemic. Papers were identified to include peer-reviewed journal articles and academic grey literature published between 2020-2024, where 791 unique papers were yielded from Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and PsychINFO. A total of 14 papers met inclusion criteria, and were assessed for their quality, heterogeneity, WEIRD+ bias, and open access. The MINDSPACE framework was used to categorise the nudges. Findings suggest three characteristics may lead nudges to result in unintended outcomes: (1) A mismatch in target audience; (2) the use of prosocial and self-interest nudges; and (3) the elicitation of strong emotional responses. It was observed that there were scenarios in which nudges with the identified characteristics may still succeed. Comparing situations when similar nudges backfired or succeeded revealed that context-dependent factors may be the reason for such differences. Findings from this review may aid in designing future behavioural interventions to minimise potential negative outcomes. Future research on nudge effects could benefit from more studies assessing actual behaviours rather than intentions and investigate the characteristics identified in this review. This repository contains data collected during literature search and data extraction stages of the systematic review. Project initiated as part of a final year project in Psychology at Nanyang Technological University in 2024.
| Date made available | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | DR-NTU (Data) |