Tuesday, August 20, 2024
My List of Applied Behavioural Economics Papers to Use in Case Study Assignments
For this assignment I need about two dozen or so appropriate and interesting papers of behavioural economic interventions being tested. My main inclusion requirements are that they need to be field experiments involving actual consumers/clients/users in real world situations. And that they need to cover a type of behavioural economics intervention that we talked about in class and that it is the type of intervention that is interesting enough to be able to write something about (so not just simplification of the application form or 'making it more personal' or things like that). The paper doesn't necessarily have to find a positive effect.
My current list is below. Some I've used for years. Some are recent additions. Maybe other lecturers find it interesting. Suggestions are very, very welcome. I am especially looking for papers that use some of the more 'exotic' behavioural economics ideas (especially the decoy effect, anchoring, positive/negative reciprocity, sunk costs, mental accounting). I've got more than enough examples that use the opt-in/opt-out effect or (descriptive) social norms. (The papers with numbers between brackets I cover in the lectures so I won't be assigning them for the assessment).
1. John & Blime (2018) How best to nudge taxpayers? The impact of message simplification and descriptive social norms on payment rates in a central London local authority, Journal of Behavioral Public Administration https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.11.10
- using descriptive social norms (and simplification) to increase number of people who pay their council tax. social norm doesn't work in study 1, actually backfires in study 2
2. Ebeling & Berger (2015) Domestic uptake of green energy promoted by opt-out tariffs, Nature Climate Change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279252379_Domestic_uptake_of_green_energy_promoted_by_opt-out_tariffs
- default opt-in/opt-out selection to get more people enrolling in a (more expensive) green energy contract
3. Aysola, Tahirovic, Troxel, Asch, Gangemi, Hodlofski, Zhu & Volpp (2018) A Randomized Controlled Trial of Opt-In Versus Opt-Out Enrollment Into a Diabetes Behavioral Intervention, American Journal of Health Promotion https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0890117116671673
- opt-in vs opt-out to get participants to enrol in a diabetes study (they send a letter about the study)
- (significant positive effect on enrollment, optout participants are less likely to actively participate in the study though. They show this by following up with lots of additional more medicial measurements)
4. Altmann, Falk, Heidhues & Jayaraman (2014) Defaults and Donations: Evidence from a Field Experiment, working paper https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2534708
- default amounts on a charitable giving website (plus the donation to the website itself)
- (yes people give the default more but higher defaults also cause fewer people to donate. Cancels each other out. There is a significant effect of the default effect on donation 5/10/15% to cover the cost of the platform)
5. Verplanken & Roy (2016) Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment, Journal of Environmental Psychology https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494415300487
- timely (easT): people who have just moved (or not) get a bunch of information/flyers/etc to get those people to increase a varied suite of pro-environmental behaviours
6. Hafner, Pollard and Van Stolkd (2018) Incentives and physical activity, RAND Research Report https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2870.html
- insurance company tries to get its costumers to be more active, with incentives, one version of which is loss framed (has extra positive effect)
7. Sanders (2015) In search of the limits of applying reciprocity in the field: Evidence from two large field experiments, BIT Paper https://web.archive.org/web/20200123133425/https://www.bi.team/publications/in-search-of-the-limits-of-applying-reciprocity-in-the-field-evidence-from-two-large-field-experiments/
- recprocity (giving people a packet of sweets) to try and affect charitable giving behaviour
8. Grant & Hofmann (2011) It's Not All About Me: Motivating Hand Hygiene Among Health Care Professionals by Focusing on Patients https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51791082_It's_Not_All_About_Me_Motivating_Hand_Hygiene_Among_Health_Care_Professionals_by_Focusing_on_Patients
- getting hospital staff to wash their hands more by making them think about the effect on patients (instead of themselves). The paper frames it in the context of overconfidence (hospital staff more likely to think their immune) but maybe this is about altruism/social considerations?
9. Goswami and Urminsky (2016) When should the Ask be a Nudge? The Effect of Default Amounts on Charitable Donations, Journal of Marketing Research https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.15.0001
- effect of default amounts on charitable donations
10. Fielding, Russell, Spinks, Mccrea, Stewart & Gardner (2012) Water End Use Feedback Produces Long-Term Reductions in Residential Water Demand, working paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235766458_Water_End_Use_Feedback_Produces_Long-Term_Reductions_in_Residential_Water_Demand
- descriptive social norm (and some information interventions) to influence household water use
11. Egebark and Ekström (2016) Can indifference make the world greener? Journal of Environmental Economics and Management https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009506961500090X
- default option (and moral messages) to increase the use of double printing in university
12. Kettle, Hernandez, Ruda & Sanders (2016) Behavioral Interventions in Tax Compliance: Evidence from Guatemala, World Bank Working paper https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/7690.html
- descriptive social norm to increase number of tax declerations
13. Larkin, Sanders, Andresen & Algate (2019) Testing local descriptive norms and salience of enforcement action: A field experiment to increase tax collection, BIT Working paper https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3167575
- descriptive social norms to remind to people to pay their local tax
14. Ashraf, Karlan & Yin (2012) Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines, The Quarterly Journal of Economics https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/121/2/635/1884028?redirectedFrom=fulltext
- trying to get people (especially those with hyperbolic intertemporal preferences) to save more by offereing one condition a self-commitment savings device
15. List, Murphy, Price and James (2021) An experimental test of fundraising appeals targeting donor and recipient benefits, Nature https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_pubs/273/
- Message either emphasizing individual benefits of giving (warm glow) or benefits to others (pure altruism) as part of a charity appeal (the first has positive effect, the second doesn't)
16. Tilleard, Bremner, Middleton, Turner & Holdsworth (2021) Encouraging firms to adopt beneficial new behaviors: Lessons from a large-scale cluster-randomized field experiment https://journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/view/146
- Using descriptive social norm to get firms to file paperwork on time with companies house.
17. Yoeli, Hoffman, Rand & Nowak (2013) Powering up with indirect reciprocity in a large-scale field experiment, PNAS https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1301210110
- manipulate observability (= opportunity to signal altruism) of signing up for program aimed at preventing power black outs (by automatically cutting down your electricity demand when there is a surge).
(18). Gneezy & List (2006) Putting Behavioral Economics to Work: Testing for Gift Exchange in Labor Markets Using Field Experiments, Econometrica https://www.nber.org/papers/w12063
- Students were hired for a data entry task in the library or as door-to-door fundraisers. They were either paid the hourly wage promised during recruitment or a higher amount (triggering positive reciprocity).
(19). Falk (2007) Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment, Econometrica https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/1148/charitable-giving-as-a-gift-exchange-evidence-from-a-field-experiment
- As part of a fundraising campaign some potential donors received a gift with their solicitation letter (1 or 4 postcards with children's drawings). Positive reciprocity triggered higher donations.
(20) Fryer, Levitt, List & Sadoff (2022) Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment American Economic Journal: Economic Policy https://www.nber.org/papers/w18237
- trying to increase students' math test scores by either giving teachers a bonus at the end of the year if they reach a target or removing a bonus (recieved at the beginning of the year) if they don't reach the target (loss aversion)
21. Sallis, Harper & Sanders (2018) Effect of persuasive messages on National Health Service Organ Donor Registrations: a pragmatic quasi-randomised controlled trial with one million UK road taxpayers, Trials https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-018-2855-5
- tests social norms and loss/gain frame and reciprocity (so probably not useful to assign as a one case study assignment) to increase the number of people who sign up to become organ donor when registering their drivers licence
22. Alpizar, Carlsson & Johansson-Stenman (2008) Anonymity, reciprocity, and conformity: Evidence from voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica, Journal of Public Economics https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272707001909
- tests the effect of reciprocity (small gift), observability vs anomymity, and descriptive social norms (maybe a bit much for a single topic case study assignment) on charitable donation at a Costa Rican national park
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