Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy
Despite the proliferation of nudge research in the last few decades, very little published work aims to nudge the behavior of policymakers. Here we explore the impact of a well-established nudge on policymakers in the Northwest Territories of Canada. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial,...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:10586654 2023-11-12T04:23:30+01:00 Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy Bochon, Lindsay Blair Dean, Janet Rosteck, Tanja Zhao, Jiaying 2023-10-19 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10586654/ https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10586654/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 © 2023 Bochon et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. PLoS One Research Article Text 2023 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 2023-10-22T01:05:38Z Despite the proliferation of nudge research in the last few decades, very little published work aims to nudge the behavior of policymakers. Here we explore the impact of a well-established nudge on policymakers in the Northwest Territories of Canada. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, we emailed an invitation to policymakers (N = 263) to attend an online briefing on gendered impacts of policy. In the treatment condition (N = 133), the invitation contained personal stories of two women whose lives were disproportionally impacted by public policies more than men. In the control condition (N = 130), the invitation did not contain such stories. After the briefing, we sent all participants in both conditions a link to a public pledge that they could sign. The pledge was to lead and advocate for equity-oriented policymaking. Contrary to our prediction, there was a small backfiring effect where policymakers in the treatment condition (3.0%) were less likely to attend the briefing than the control condition (7.7%). However, two policymakers (1.5%) in the treatment condition signed the public pledge compared to one (0.8%) in the control condition. The current findings reveal the limits of using personal stories as a nudge to influence policymakers. We discuss insights gained from this experiment and follow-up debriefings with policymakers on how to improve future behavioral interventions designed to nudge policymakers. Text Northwest Territories PubMed Central (PMC) Canada Northwest Territories PLOS ONE 18 10 e0293036 |
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Research Article Bochon, Lindsay Blair Dean, Janet Rosteck, Tanja Zhao, Jiaying Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
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Research Article |
description |
Despite the proliferation of nudge research in the last few decades, very little published work aims to nudge the behavior of policymakers. Here we explore the impact of a well-established nudge on policymakers in the Northwest Territories of Canada. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, we emailed an invitation to policymakers (N = 263) to attend an online briefing on gendered impacts of policy. In the treatment condition (N = 133), the invitation contained personal stories of two women whose lives were disproportionally impacted by public policies more than men. In the control condition (N = 130), the invitation did not contain such stories. After the briefing, we sent all participants in both conditions a link to a public pledge that they could sign. The pledge was to lead and advocate for equity-oriented policymaking. Contrary to our prediction, there was a small backfiring effect where policymakers in the treatment condition (3.0%) were less likely to attend the briefing than the control condition (7.7%). However, two policymakers (1.5%) in the treatment condition signed the public pledge compared to one (0.8%) in the control condition. The current findings reveal the limits of using personal stories as a nudge to influence policymakers. We discuss insights gained from this experiment and follow-up debriefings with policymakers on how to improve future behavioral interventions designed to nudge policymakers. |
format |
Text |
author |
Bochon, Lindsay Blair Dean, Janet Rosteck, Tanja Zhao, Jiaying |
author_facet |
Bochon, Lindsay Blair Dean, Janet Rosteck, Tanja Zhao, Jiaying |
author_sort |
Bochon, Lindsay Blair |
title |
Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
title_short |
Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
title_full |
Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
title_fullStr |
Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
title_full_unstemmed |
Nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
title_sort |
nudging policymakers on gendered impacts of policy |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10586654/ https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 |
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Canada Northwest Territories |
geographic_facet |
Canada Northwest Territories |
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Northwest Territories |
genre_facet |
Northwest Territories |
op_source |
PLoS One |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10586654/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 |
op_rights |
© 2023 Bochon et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293036 |
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PLOS ONE |
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