Behavioral insights and nudging: Why is behavior analysis not contributing (enough)?

In recent years there has been an exponentially increase interest in the empirical methodology often times referred to as “What Works” and implementing nudging (i.e. an environmental change meant to alter choice behavior) experiments on the basis of those insights. Even though acknowledging the important contributions form behavioral economics to creating and developing this innovative research and service-delivery framework, behavior analysis is hardly mentioned, if any at all. There seem to be historical and contextual reasons why a solid point of contact has not been established before (see Simon & Tagliabue, under review). We suggest developing further the existing framework, thanks to the findings in behavior analysis concerning understanding and controlling behavior: in fact, soft control, which stands for making one alternative easier yet retaining free choice, suits best the terminology of libertarian paternalism originally coined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to justify governmental influence on choice behavior (Reisch & Sunstein, 2016). This contribution aims at raising awareness on a cross disciplinary topic towards which behavior analysis is yet not contributing at its fullest, present a nudging experiment that serves as our example for scaling up nudging applications and, finally, raising present ethical concerns of “soft” manipulation of choice behavior.