Public health policy: nudge theory in a discourse of behavioural economics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61357/sehs.v14i2.32Keywords:
Behavioural economics, health policy, nudges, food habits, cognitive biases, treatment adherence, health preventionAbstract
The aim of this paper is to present a discourse of behavioural economics with its nudge theory in public health policy. Considering the great number of papers dealing with this phenomenon in the past few years, the study identifies various focus areas and suggests areas for future research using peer-reviewed journal articles. They have been properly selected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases in the three-year period of 2018 to 2020 based on the approach of Hohenstein et al. (2014). The overall effectiveness of the reviewed nudging strategies was over 80%. A range of explored areas such as obesity or addictions is associated with high costs for the health care and social systems and with lowered quality of life. Therefore, this review suggests a movement towards more research and publications in all the focus areas and collecting more data of nudges so that health policymakers and other stakeholders may use their indisputable potential.
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