Abstract

Nudges and other behavioral interventions can be framed either as encouraging positive behavior and outcomes like eating more healthy food or saving for retirement, or as discouraging negative behavior and outcomes like eating less unhealthy food or not saving for retirement. Often, these two frames are logically equivalent—for example, encouraging renewable energy use has the same result as discouraging nonrenewable energy use—but do consumers interpret them that way? In seven experiments (N = 2790), participants perceived interventions described with encouraging frames to be more ethical than those described with discouraging frames, considered the businesses that instituted them to be more appealing, and were more willing to engage with these interventions and businesses. This framing effect was stronger when interventions were meant to help consumers versus when they were designed to help the business. The perception that interventions with encouraging frames were more ethical was driven by a belief that discouraging negative behavior was more manipulative than encouraging positive behavior, which in turn led consumers to be less interested in engaging with businesses that employed interventions with discouraging frames.

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