IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gre/wpaper/2025-05.html

Co-design of Behavioural Public Policies: Epistemic Promises and Challenges

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel De La Cruz Solal

    (Université Côte d'Azur, France
    GREDEG CNRS)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to highlight the potential of codesign approaches to address the risk of boomerang effects following the implementation of social norm nudges. I highlight several epistemic causes of the boomerang effect and argue that a co-design of nudges could provide an effective solution to address these causes. Furthermore, I argue that such an approach, based on the deliberation process between citizens and experts, is likely to enhance the ethical aspects of nudging. After a clarification of the notion of ‘codesign’, which remains quite elusive in the literature, I discuss some challenges that codesign approaches face, in particular regarding the status of ‘expert-citizens’ in codesign

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel De La Cruz Solal, 2025. "Co-design of Behavioural Public Policies: Epistemic Promises and Challenges," GREDEG Working Papers 2025-05, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
  • Handle: RePEc:gre:wpaper:2025-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2025-05.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Sugden, 2018. "‘Better off, as judged by themselves’: a reply to Cass Sunstein," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 65(1), pages 9-13, March.
    2. repec:osf:socarx:zh3qw_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Samuli Reijula & Jaakko Kuorikoski & Timo Ehrig & Konstantinos Katsikopoulos & Shyam Sunder, 2018. "Nudge, Boost, or Design? Limitations of behaviorally informed policy under social interaction," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 2(1), pages 99-105, March.
    4. Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, 2013. "Energy Conservation “Nudges” And Environmentalist Ideology: Evidence From A Randomized Residential Electricity Field Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 680-702, June.
    5. Lecouteux, Guilhem & Mitrouchev, Ivan, 2024. "The view from Manywhere: normative economics with context-dependent preferences," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 374-396, July.
    6. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1082-1095, October.
    7. Josephine M. Chambers & Carina Wyborn & Melanie E. Ryan & Robin S. Reid & Maraja Riechers & Anca Serban & Nathan J. Bennett & Christopher Cvitanovic & María E. Fernández-Giménez & Kathleen A. Galvin &, 2021. "Six modes of co-production for sustainability," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 983-996, November.
    8. Allcott, Hunt, 2011. "Social norms and energy conservation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1082-1095.
    9. Cristina Bicchieri & Eugen Dimant, 2022. "Nudging with care: the risks and benefits of social information," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(3), pages 443-464, June.
    10. Albert V. Norström & Christopher Cvitanovic & Marie F. Löf & Simon West & Carina Wyborn & Patricia Balvanera & Angela T. Bednarek & Elena M. Bennett & Reinette Biggs & Ariane Bremond & Bruce M. Campbe, 2020. "Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(3), pages 182-190, March.
    11. Loschelder, David D. & Siepelmeyer, Henrik & Fischer, Daniel & Rubel, Julian A., 2019. "Dynamic norms drive sustainable consumption: Norm-based nudging helps café customers to avoid disposable to-go-cups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 75(PA).
    12. Ostrom, Elinor, 1996. "Crossing the great divide: Coproduction, synergy, and development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1073-1087, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martínez Villarreal, Déborah & Díaz, Lina M. & Maldonado, Stanislao, 2023. "Nudging the Trendsetters: Increasing Second-dose HPV Vaccination in Bogota, Colombia," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13312, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Kandul, Serhiy & Lanz, Bruno, 2021. "Public good provision, in-group cooperation and out-group descriptive norms: A lab experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    3. Fuhrmann-Riebel, Hanna & D’Exelle, Ben & López Vargas, Kristian & Tonke, Sebastian & Verschoor, Arjan, 2024. "Correcting misperceptions about trends and norms to address weak collective action — Experimental evidence from a recycling program," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    4. Diekert, Florian & Eymess, Tillmann, 2024. "Changing collective action: Nudges and team decisions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 388-406.
    5. Alix Rouillé, 2023. "Norm from the top: a social norm nudge to promote low-practiced behaviors without boomerang effect," Working Papers halshs-03673004, HAL.
    6. Migchelbrink, Koen & Raymaekers, Pieter, 2023. "Nudging people to pay their parking fines on time. Evidence from a cluster-randomized field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    7. Raineau, Yann & Giraud-Héraud, Éric & Lecocq, Sébastien, 2025. "Social comparison nudges: What actually happens when we are told what others do?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    8. Daniel Engler & Gunnar Gutsche & Amantia Simixhiu & Andreas Ziegler, 2022. "Social norms and individual climate protection activities: A framed field experiment for Germany," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202230, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    9. Astrid Dannenberg & Gunnar Gutsche & Marlene Batzke & Sven Christens & Daniel Engler & Fabian Mankat & Sophia Moeller & Eva Weingaertner & Andreas Ernst & Marcel Lumkowsky & Georg von Wangenheim & Ger, 2022. "The effects of norms on environmental behavior," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202219, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    10. Engler, Daniel & Ziegler, Andreas & Gutsche, Gunnar & Simixhiu, Amantia, 2023. "Social Norms and Individual Climate Protection Activities: A Framed Field Experiment for Germany," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277662, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Holzmeister, Felix & Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael & Schwaiger, Rene, 2022. "Nudging debtors to pay their debt: Two randomized controlled trials," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 535-551.
    12. Kandul, Serhiy & Lang, Ghislaine & Lanz, Bruno, 2020. "Social comparison and energy conservation in a collective action context: A field experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    13. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Katare, Bhagyashree, 2018. "Low-cost approaches to increasing gym attendance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 63-76.
    14. Brown, Joe & Hamoudi, Amar & Jeuland, Marc & Turrini, Gina, 2017. "Seeing, believing, and behaving: Heterogeneous effects of an information intervention on household water treatment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 141-159.
    15. Lim, Sungmin & Choi, Syngjoo & Hong, Jong Ho & Kim, Booyuel & Lee, Heerae & Shin, Jinwook, 2025. "Promoting willingness to pay for environmental charges in electricity tariff: Evidence from a randomized survey experiment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    16. Falk, Armin & Boneva, Teodora & Chopra, Felix, 2021. "Fighting Climate Change: the Role of Norms, Preferences, and Moral Values," CEPR Discussion Papers 16343, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Benjamin Ouvrard & Stefan Ambec & Arnaud Reynaud & Stéphane Cezera & Murudaiah Shivamurthy, 2022. "Sharing rules for a common-pool resource in a lab experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(3), pages 605-635, October.
    18. Bonan, Jacopo & Cattaneo, Cristina & D’Adda, Giovanna & Tavoni, Massimo, 2019. "Can We Make Social Information Programs More Effective? The Role of Identity and Values," RFF Working Paper Series 19-21, Resources for the Future.
    19. Brülisauer, Marcel & Goette, Lorenz & Jiang, Zhengyi & Schmitz, Jan & Schubert, Renate, 2020. "Appliance-specific feedback and social comparisons: Evidence from a field experiment on energy conservation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    20. Linek, Maximilian & Traxler, Christian, 2021. "Framing and social information nudges at Wikipedia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1269-1279.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gre:wpaper:2025-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Patrice Bougette (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/credcfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.