Nudging Strategies for Enhancing Flexible Employment Pension Insurance Participation Intention from the Perspective of Behavioral Public Policy

As China's economic structure transforms and employment patterns diversify, the flexible employment population has expanded to approximately 200 million, accounting for over 40% of the total urban employment. However, this group faces significantly lower pension insurance participation rates due to income instability, insufficient confidence in insurance benefits, and lack of organizational support. Drawing on behavioral public policy theory, this study investigates the effectiveness and mechanisms of nudge strategies in enhancing flexible workers' willingness to participate in basic pension insurance.

An analytical framework is constructed with perceived importance of pension insurance as the independent variable, policy comprehension as the mediator, and participation willingness as the dependent variable, with three nudge strategies—default options, procedural simplification, and descriptive norms—as moderators. A 2×2×2 between-subjects scenario experiment was conducted from June to August 2024, collecting 742 valid responses from flexible workers across 15 provinces in China. Participants were randomly assigned to eight experimental conditions and exposed to simulated pension policy materials. A pre-post test design measured changes in participation willingness on five-point Likert scales, with manipulation checks confirming all three experimental manipulations were effective.

The findings reveal several key results. First, perceived importance significantly and positively predicts participation willingness. Second, policy comprehension mediates this relationship, though the mediation effect accounts for only 3.9% of the total effect, suggesting a “dual-pathway” model: a dominant intuitive pathway where importance recognition directly drives participation willingness, and a weaker rational pathway mediated by policy comprehension. Third, default options exhibit complex moderation-positively moderating the direct path from perceived importance to participation willingness, yet negatively moderating the path from policy comprehension to participation willingness, suggesting a “cognitive offloading” mechanism. Fourth, procedural simplification moderates only the direct path, functioning as a “cognitive tax” reducer. Fifth, descriptive norms fail to produce significant moderating effects, attributable to the lack of observable peer behavior and absence of stable reference networks among flexible workers. Sixth, the interaction between default options and procedural simplification produces a synergistic effect at the cognitive transformation stage (perceived importance-policy comprehension), indicating that combined nudges optimize cognitive resource allocation in early decision-making phases.

Theoretically, this study extends nudge theory to non-standard employment social security, revealing that flexible workers' decisions are primarily attitude-driven rather than knowledge-driven. Practically, policymakers should prioritize enhancing recognition of pension insurance's long-term value while combining default enrollment with streamlined procedures to reduce cognitive barriers. Future research should employ multi-item scales, explore heterogeneity across employment subtypes, and investigate optimal nudge-traditional policy combinations.