Are behavioural nudges overrated or just badly designed?

livemint.com:

Last month, an article in Harvard Business Review (HBR) ‘Will Your Nudge Have a Lasting Impact?’ by Evan Polman and Sam J. Maglio questioned the effectiveness of nudges used in policymaking and corporate strategy. Ever since the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein was published in 2008, behavioural nudges, or interventions designed to subtly steer individuals towards desired behaviours, has become a favourite tool of policymakers around the world.

Governments of the UK, US, Canada and even India have created ‘nudge units.’ Several organizations in a variety of fields, including finance, health, education and sustainability, have created specific teams that deploy nudges to influence the behaviour of target audience. The core argument of the HBR article is that although behavioural nudges make people more likely to pick a targeted option, nudged people use it less often and for less time than those who make that choice without a nudge. For example, it is possible to increase people’s healthy snack choices by strategically placing fruits and vegetables in easy-to-reach spots.

However, they may not eat these healthy snacks often enough, with much of it going into trash. So, do nudges actually work? The simple answer is that in some cases they do not and in some cases they do. Knowing the difference between the two situations is critical to a nudge practitioner’s success.

Nudges cannot solve complex human behaviour problems whose roots are spread deep and wide. Black money in an economy is one such complex problem. Many players and factors have surreptitiously interacted over several decades to create this problem, so it was not surprising that an attempt to solve it in 2016 through a singular nudge like