This is part 3 of the Nudge Database.
Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII || Part IX || Part X || @Makeuya
21.
Nudge: RCT in Malawi where treatment
groups received financial incentives
to come pick up their HIV results.
Even
a tiny incentive doubled the % of people coming to collect their results
compared to the control, before tapering off quickly as the incentive
increased.
Tags : financial incentives / HIV /
Malawi
Source: Thorton (2008), '
The Demand for, and Impact of, Learning HIV Status', The American Economic Review.
22.
Nudge: In 2
get-out-the-vote experiments, the authors find that messages emphasizing high
expected turnout is more effective at motivating voters than messages
emphasising low turnout. Important to note that this only measured voters’
stated willingness to vote, not whether they actually did so.
Tags : voting / social proof / norms
Source: Gerber & Rogers, (2009), ‘
Descriptive Social Norms and Motivation to Vote: Everybody’s Voting and so Should You’, The Journal of Politics.
23.
Nudge: A nice document that identifies the behavioral biases of consumers, insurers, regulators &
politicians in an American insurance
context and recommends strategies to overcome them. Unusually for economics, some
of them are even realistic. Please see the link below for a nice summary.
Tags : insurance / nudges / Wharton
Source:
Kunreuther et al. (2012), ‘
Insurance and Behavioral Economics : Improving Decisions in the Most Misunderstood Industry’.
24.
Nudge: This is not a nudge per se but rather an area
ripe for nudges. Cosmides & Tooby, building on earlier research, found
dramatic differences in the ability of subjects to answer the famous medical
diagnoses problem correctly depending on whether it was presented in a bayesian
or frequentist frame.
Bayesian framing
(12% answered correctly) :
“If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1/1000 has a false positive
rate of 5%, what is the chance that a person found to have a positive result
actually has the disease, assuming that you know nothing about the person's
symptoms or signs?”
Frequentist framing
(56% answered correctly): “1
out of every 1000 Americans has disease X. A test has been developed to detect
when a person has disease X. Every time the test is given to a person who has
the disease, the test comes out positive (i.e. the "true positive"
rate is 100%. Sometimes the test comes out positive when it's given to a
healthy person. Out of every 1000 healthy people, 50 of them test positive for
the disease (i.e. the "false positive" rate is 5%). 1 out of every
1000 Americans has disease X. A test has been developed to detect when a person
has disease X.
Every
time the test is given to a person who has the disease, the test comes out
positive (i.e. the "true positive" rate is 100%. Sometimes the test
comes out positive when it's given to a healthy person. Out of every 1000 healthy
people, 50 of them test positive for the disease (i.e. the "false
positive" rate is 5%).
Given
a sample of 1000 Americans. Given the info. above, how many people who test
positive for the disease will actually have it? ___ out of ____.”
There
are other framings in the paper, the
most effective of which has almost all subjects finding the correct answer.
People seem to digest frequentist framings much more intuitively, at least in
these areas. What are nudge implications of this? Framing of information given
to doctors, judges, etc?
Tags : frequentist / bayesian / framing
Sources: Casscells et al. (1978), '
Interpretation by physicians of clinical laboratory results', The New England Journal of Medicine.
Cosmides & Tooby (1995), ‘
Are
humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some
conclusions from the literature on judgment under uncertainty’, Elsevier.
25.
Nudge: Employees were given the option to make a
Quick Enrollment ™ decision to enroll in their 401(k) plan at pre-determined
contribution rates and asset allocations. At one company Quick Enrollment
tripled 401(k) participation rates among new employees 3 months after hire. In
keeping with the other works on pensions, simplification is a major factor
here.
Tags: pensions / defaults / savings
Source: Choi et al (2006), ‘
Reducing the Complexity Costs of 401(k) Participation Through Quick Enrollment', NBER Working Paper.
26.
Nudge: CARES
was a voluntary commitment product to help people quit smoking. Smokers got a savings account
in which they put their money for 6 months, after which they take a urine test.
If they pass, their money is returned without
interest. If they fail, the money goes to charity. The authors found those
offered CARES were more likely to 3% points more likely quit smoking after 6
months.
Tags : smoking / commitment
/ CARES
Source:
Giné et al. (2008), ‘
Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Contract for Smoking Cessation’, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
27.
Nudge: Field experiments on the
effectivenss of normative messages
designed to promote towel re-use in
hotel rooms. The control received the message “This hotel has initiated a conservation program.” An example of a
treatment normative message was “Nearly
75% of hotel guests choose to reuse their towels each day. To support our
guests who want to conserve, this hotel has initiated a conservation program.”
The authors find evidence of behavior
change in the treatment groups but note the overlapping confidence intervals.
Tags : social norms / hotel towels /
energy efficiency
Source: Schultz et al (2007), ‘
Using normative social influence to promote conservation among hotel guests’, Social Influence.
28.
Nudge: The Behavioural Insights Team looked at
reducing the problem of ‘did not attends’ (DNAs) for NHS appointments. Trials
have suggested DNAs can be drastically reduced through a combination of
behavioral approaches; for example prompting patients to verbally repeat their
appointment time to staff and using normative messages indicating how many
patients usually turned up on time for their appointments. Although these studies were reported in the BIT's 2010-11 annual update, they were carried out by Martin et al.
Tags: B.I.T. / healthcare / commitment
/ norms
Source: Martin et al (2012), 'Commitments, norms and custard creams–a social influence approach to reducing did not attends', Journal of Royal Society of Medicine
Reported in Behavioural Insights Team 2010-11
29.
Nudge: An older, reasonably famous paper about the
use of priming in a wine shop. By
playing French or German music in the background, sales of French and German
wine seemed to be significantly affected.
Tags: priming / wine / music
Source: North (1997), ‘
Instore Music Affects Product Choice’, Nature.
30.
Nudge: This
paper examined the issue of low awareness and take-up rates for government
support programs, specifically for college financial aid. The authors used 2
treatment groups to test (1) the efficacy of simplifying the application forms for college financial aid for low
& middle-income families applying and (2) the efficacy of having a tax
professional provide guidance on completing the application form. The authors
found that those who received assistance with their application were
significantly more likely to submit the application, enroll in college and
receive further financial aid. These benefits were not seen for those given the
simplified form but not the professional assistance. This speaks to the
importance of channel factors; in this case sitting down with a professional
for an hour to complete the application.
Tags: simplification / education
Source: Bettinger et al. (2009), '
The Role of Simplification and Information in College Decisions: Results from the H&R Block FAFSA Experiment', NBER Working Paper.
