Abstract

Information Systems (IS) research broadly agrees that nudging is an effective method for influencing user decisions and that digital technology can be instrumental to successful nudging. Our systematic review of the extant literature (213 IS papers) shows that the majority of published works implicitly rely on an early assumption that treats digital nudges as digitized versions of their physical, static counterparts. Recent debates about digital “x” versus IT “x,” however, demonstrate that the unique properties of digital objects (interactivity, computability, distributedness) enable new real-time, adaptive phenomena that differ qualitatively from traditional IT “x” phenomena. In the context of nudging, this means that choice architectures can operate as dynamic, generative processes that adapt in real time, thus enabling continuous experimentation and degrees of algorithmic curation that were not feasible before. Consequently, we argue that digital nudging must be theorized as an independent phenomenon. To capture the unique nature of digital nudging, we formally separate IT-enabled nudging from digital nudging and abstract four ideal types from our systematic review of the IS literature: IT-enabled, responsive, profile-driven, and environment-aware. We then derive propositions and draw implications for future research by articulating the idiosyncratic design configurations of each ideal type. Our typology is intended as a call to action for IS researchers who, given their deep understanding of both emerging digital technology and behavioral processes, are uniquely positioned to expand the search space for digital nudging research.

DOI

10.17705/1jais.01031

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