Comparing effects of default nudges and informing on recycled water decisions

Despite a serious need for sustainable alternative water supplies in many parts of the world, public opposition remains a barrier to implementing solutions such as safe wastewater recycling schemes. Here, we compared two strategies to increase acceptance of recycled water: default nudges and informing choices. Experiment 1 (N = 81) showed that defaults increased acceptance of recycled water. Experiment 2 (N = 142) replicated the effect but also indicated that weak educational interventions (simple infographics) interacted with confidence, such that those who switched from the default option had measurably higher confidence in their choice when given the infographic. Experiment 3 (N = 146) suggested that in a college undergraduate sample, strong educational interventions (educational videos) eliminated the effect of nudges on recycled water acceptance, increased acceptance, increased knowledge of recycled water, and also interacted with confidence in the same way observed in Experiment 2. Experiment 4 (N = 271) showed that strong educational interventions can also increase recycled water acceptance in an MTurk sample. Since both education and defaults may be effective, we suggest that future work would benefit from cost-benefit analyses between strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).