Sludge Audits.

SUNSTEIN, C. R. (2022). Sludge Audits. Behavioural Public Policy, 6(4), 654-673.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2022

Volume

6

Issue

4

Pages

654-673

DOI

10.1017/bpp.2019.32

DOI registrant

Cambridge University Press

Link

https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2019.32

Cited from

economics_finance

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Screening
  • The stronger distributional critique — that the same frictions fall disproportionately on less-resourced participants — is developed in the administrative burden literature (Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2015; Herd and Moynihan 2025) and in Sunstein's sludge audits framework

    This sourceDevelops sludge as the term of art for excessive or unjustified frictions impeding access to goods and services, and proposes sludge audits as a policy-design tool for systematically identifying and reducing them.

Mechanisms

• Friction or Salience Adjustment
  • The same friction that protects can be weaponized as sludge — effort deliberately added to the option a designer dislikes, or salience used to exploit attention rather than inform it.

    This sourceSludge is excessive or unjustified friction that makes it harder for people to act on their choices.

Verification

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