Nudges are non-intrusive information interventions (such as telling what others have done in a previous situation) and much research has shown that they can affect individual behavior. Whether nudges are effective when decisions are taken by teams is largely unknown. Yet, knowing whether teams react to nudges is important because many economic decisions are taken by teams and many economic decisions are taken in settings where more conventional command-and-control policies or price interventions are not feasible. In their experiment, teams play a prisoner’s dilemma game against other teams. In half of the visited landing sites, teams are nudged towards cooperation, and in the other half teams were not nudged. Even though the structure of the prisoner’s dilemma game is not changed, teams that were nudged were about 15% more likely to cooperate. Moreover, Diekert and Eymess find that captains who have decision power in real life are especially receptive to the nudge.

Read more about the paper here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825624001052

or contact Prof Florian Diekert if you want to learn more.