Quick Thoughts on Boosting Versus Nudging

I only recently learned about the term “boosting”. Boosting takes a different worldview of addressing a person’s competencies whereas nudging tends to address immediate behavior. There does appear to be some overlap between boosting and System 2 nudges (where the nudge tries to engage a person’s slow, reflective thinking). There is also overlap between short-term boosting and educational nudges. However, long-term boosting is about building a person’s competencies (e.g., teaching them, giving them tools, getting competencies to persist even beyond the immediate decision point). A boost appears to necessarily require both transparency of the intervention and cooperation of the person who is a target of the boost. Those advancing the concept of boosting admit that boosting may actually be more costly to implement and less effective on affecting immediate behavior as compared to nudges.

For more details on boosting, I recommend starting with the following paper.