Salience, transparency, and self-nudging: a digital nudge to promote healthier food product choices

Information Systems (IS) research has proposed digital nudges as a promising toolset for supporting consumers in making better decisions. However, there is a vivid academic debate regarding the ethical underpinnings of nudging and potential measures to alleviate ethical concerns. One particularly promising approach to digital nudging is leveraging salience effects. Yet, the potential of digital salience nudges remains underexplored in IS literature, and little is known about how measures proposed to alleviate ethical concerns affect their behavioural impact. In a preregistered online experiment (N = 600), we assess the effects of a digital salience nudge on the healthiness of food product choices. Additionally, we examine how two proposed ethical measures, namely transparency and self-nudging, influence the nudge’s effects. We find that implementing the digital salience nudge in an online supermarket decreased the proportion of unhealthy food products chosen by 63% and increased the proportion of healthy alternatives by 30%. Notably, disclosing transparent information about the nudge did not impact its effectiveness. Offering the nudge as a self-nudge led to comparable effects to a preset nudge when combined with transparent information. We conclude that digital salience nudging is effective and that nudges can be ethically designed without compromising their behavioural impact.