Explorations in Digital Nudging for Onl...

People increasingly seek for inspiration and make food choices using online recipe sites. Since the most popular recipes are often not the healthiest ones, the goal of our research is to nudge users towards healthier choices. Existing literature shows that digital nudging can be effective in this domain, but it often remains open if the observed effects are due to the specific way the nudge is implemented. In our research in progress, we examine the effectiveness of different nudges through user studies (N=225). Our results indicate that (a) not all types of popular nudges like setting defaults are necessarily effective, (b) that a hybrid nudge that in addition leverages social information is effective across food categories and (c) that considering ingredient information when nudging is promising to influence user decisions. Our results imply that various implementation alternatives should be explored to maximize the effects of digital nudging.