How do you use a referral program to motivate people? We ran a large-scale experiment aimed at increasing referral volumes at our staffing company. The details of the experiment were motivated by concepts in behavioral science, specifically something called present bias. Many of our colleagues were surprised by what we found.
There have never been more options to choose from when paying. Under conventional Economics assumptions, this should not make a difference in either decision-making or outcomes. According to behavioral economics, however, the payment method chosen does impact (financial) decision-making and its possible outcomes. In this article we dive into the impact a payment method can have on financial decision-making.
Are VR technologies successful to increase savings? Or should we rely on more subtle simulation techniques? And does it matter whether people imagine positive or negative life events?
Heuristics play an important role in daily judgments and decision-making, but a scientific debate has been ongoing as to whether heuristics result in systematic errors or make us smarter. Both approaches have resulted in tools to support decision-making. Nudges address systematic errors and biases, while boosts support informed decision-making under uncertainty. But can these two opposing approaches be integrated into one framework?
People's failure to act is an important problem discussed in behavioral economics and finance. But inappropriate action can also be detrimental. Find out more about the action bias in this post.
Planning our retirement is an endeavour we need to undertake sooner or later. A well thought-out pension plan must be able to ensure our well-being during a long period of professional inactivity. However, a striking finding is that people do not save enough for their retirement. They have difficulties to design a retirement plan tailored to their needs and end up with an insufficient pension income and an impoverished lifestyle. Behavioural economics has pointed out some of the problems that affect retirement planning.
“How can we use behavioral insights to nudge individuals into better health decision making?” This is one of the fundamental questions that inspired the third annual Conference on Behavioral Economics (BE) in Global Health at UC Berkeley, organized by the Behavioral Economics in Reproductive Health Initiative (BERI) at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA).
Historically, most of us have been concerned about information privacy on the internet. But when it comes to our actual behavior, many of us liberally share personal information online, a finding termed the ‘privacy paradox’ in the academic literature. Why this apparent gap between attitudes and behavior?
