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on Nudge and Boosting |
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Issue of 2024‒11‒04
two papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Heller, Lorena; Nogales, Ricardo |
| Abstract: | Over 30 percent of female workers are self-employed across Latin America, relying on this mode of work for subsistence. Self-employment in the region is regularly marked by the absence of health insurance and lack of pension benefits. Despite the aspirations of many women to gain access to these benefits, they are persistently overrepresented among the socially unprotected part of the workforce. To address this issue and explore potential solutions, we conducted a laboratory experiment in Bolivia to assess the efficacy of nudges to influence the behavior of self-employed women. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six groups, each receiving either an informative message highlighting the benefits of contributing to a long-term pension system, a message emphasizing the advantages of health insurance, or a nudge aimed at reducing the effort and costs associated with enrolling in a savings or retirement plan. Our findings indicate that informative messages alone were effective in increasing voluntary contributions to experimental pension and health insurance schemes. Reductions in time and effort required for enrollment did not lead to a significant increase of voluntary contributions. Moreover, we found that the effectiveness of these interventions varied depending on the type of worker, with high-effort workers being the most responsive. |
| Keywords: | Self-employment;Pension system;Health Insurance;Laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J16 J20 J70 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13754 |
| By: | Capitán, Tabaré (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences); Thunstrom, Linda; van 't Veld, Klaas; Nordström, Jonas; Shogren, Jason F. |
| Abstract: | Calorie labeling is a popular policy to address the obesity epidemic, but it has had little empirical success. Under the premise that willful avoidance of information plays a role in this result, we propose a novel approach—pre-nudges—to make consumers more receptive to calorie information. Unlike nudges, which are used to directly influence a choice, pre-nudges are used to directly influence how consumers react to the nudge itself (the calorie label). In line with predictions from our theoretical analysis, we test two pre-nudges in the context of menu labeling: one aims to increase self-efficacy, and the other one highlights the long-term health risks of overeating. In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we find that both pre-nudges reduce calorie information avoidance. Overall, our paper suggests a possible role for pre-nudges in addressing the obesity epidemic—one of the largest public health issues globally—and illustrates the potential usefulness of pre-nudges more generally |
| Date: | 2024–10–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:vy6af |