TY - JOUR
T1 - Nudging at scale
T2 - Experimental evidence from FAFSA completion campaigns
AU - Bird, Kelli A.
AU - Castleman, Benjamin L.
AU - Denning, Jeffrey T.
AU - Goodman, Joshua
AU - Lamberton, Cait
AU - Rosinger, Kelly Ochs
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Scott Anderson, Chad Massie, and colleagues at the Common Application for their strong partnership. We also are grateful for the collaboration from Large State agency staff. We are grateful for funding from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, The Heckscher Foundation for Children, and the Kresge Foundation. Any errors or omissions are our own.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Do successful local nudge interventions maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign encouraging students to apply for financial aid for college. The campaigns collectively reached over 800,000 students, with multiple treatment arms patterned after prior local interventions in order to explore potential mechanisms. We find no impacts on aid receipt or college enrollment overall or for any subgroups. We find no evidence that different approaches to message framing, delivery, or timing, or access to one-on-one advising affected campaign efficacy. We discuss why nudge strategies that work locally may be hard to scale effectively.
AB - Do successful local nudge interventions maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign encouraging students to apply for financial aid for college. The campaigns collectively reached over 800,000 students, with multiple treatment arms patterned after prior local interventions in order to explore potential mechanisms. We find no impacts on aid receipt or college enrollment overall or for any subgroups. We find no evidence that different approaches to message framing, delivery, or timing, or access to one-on-one advising affected campaign efficacy. We discuss why nudge strategies that work locally may be hard to scale effectively.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.12.022
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.12.022
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099222675
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 183
SP - 105
EP - 128
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -