IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v204y2021ics0047272721001705.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do prize-linked incentives promote positive financial behavior? Evidence from a debt reduction intervention

Author

Listed:
  • Burke, Jeremy

Abstract

We conduct the first field experiment examining whether prize-linked incentives can be effective in promoting debt reduction by randomizing access among 6,907 borrowers in a debt management plan. We find strong take-up of the program and that takers were timelier with repayment and paid off more debt. However, average treatment effect estimates for on-time payments, programmatic dropout, and debt levels (46.7 dollars, 95% CI = [−$132, $225], control mean = $11,558) are all precise zeros. Our results suggest that despite strong interest and positive correlations, prize-linked incentives may not modify debt repayment behavior and may simply attract individuals who are ex-ante likely to repay.

Suggested Citation

  • Burke, Jeremy, 2021. "Do prize-linked incentives promote positive financial behavior? Evidence from a debt reduction intervention," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:204:y:2021:i:c:s0047272721001705
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272721001705
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104534?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard H. Thaler & Shlomo Benartzi, 2004. "Save More Tomorrow (TM): Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 164-187, February.
    2. Matthew Rabin & Ted O'Donoghue, 1999. "Doing It Now or Later," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 103-124, March.
    3. Robert M. Hunt, 2007. "Whither Consumer Credit Counseling," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Sumit Agarwal & Brent W. Ambrose (ed.), Household Credit Usage, chapter 0, pages 37-54, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. J. Michael Collins & Leah Gjertson & Justin Sydnor, 2018. "Incentives for Loan Repayments: Evidence from a Randomized Field Study," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 197-208, March.
    5. Lusardi, Annamaria & Tufano, Peter, 2015. "Debt literacy, financial experiences, and overindebtedness," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 332-368, October.
    6. Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman, 2012. "Borrow Less Tomorrow: Behavioral Approaches to Debt Reduction," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2012-17, Center for Retirement Research, revised May 2012.
    7. Stephan Meier & Charles Sprenger, 2010. "Present-Biased Preferences and Credit Card Borrowing," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 193-210, January.
    8. Jonathan Cohen & Keith Marzilli Ericson & David Laibson & John Myles White, 2020. "Measuring Time Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 299-347, June.
    9. Atalay, Kadir & Bakhtiar, Fayzan & Cheung, Stephen & Slonim, Robert, 2014. "Savings and prize-linked savings accounts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 86-106.
    10. Brigitte C. Madrian & Dennis F. Shea, 2001. "The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) Participation and Savings Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1149-1187.
    11. Will Dobbie & Jae Song, 2020. "Targeted Debt Relief and the Origins of Financial Distress: Experimental Evidence from Distressed Credit Card Borrowers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 984-1018, April.
    12. Keys, Benjamin J. & Wang, Jialan, 2019. "Minimum payments and debt paydown in consumer credit cards," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 528-548.
    13. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    15. Cookson, J. Anthony, 2018. "When saving is gambling," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 24-45.
    16. Dean Karlan & Margaret McConnell & Sendhil Mullainathan & Jonathan Zinman, 2016. "Getting to the Top of Mind: How Reminders Increase Saving," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3393-3411, December.
    17. Tufano, Peter & De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel & Maynard, Nick, 2011. "U.S. consumer demand for prize-linked savings: New evidence on a new product," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 116-118, May.
    18. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2009. "Exponential Growth Bias and Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2807-2849, December.
    19. Conlisk, John, 1993. "The Utility of Gambling," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 255-275, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hendy, Patrick & Slonim, Robert & Atalay, Kadir, 2021. "Unsticking credit card repayments from the minimum: Advice, anchors and financial incentives," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    2. Shawn Cole & Benjamin Iverson & Peter Tufano, 2022. "Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3282-3308, May.
    3. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2014. "Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 663-688, August.
    4. Gill, Andrej & Hett, Florian & Tischer, Johannes, 2022. "Time inconsistency and overdraft use: Evidence from transaction data and behavioral measurement experiments," Discussion Papers 18/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 2017. "Behavioral Inattention," NBER Working Papers 24096, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Andrieş, Alin Marius & Walker, Sarah, 2023. "When the message hurts: The unintended impacts of nudges on saving," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 439-456.
    7. Damgaard, Mette Trier & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2018. "Nudging in education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 313-342.
    8. Andrej Gill & Florian Hett & Johannes Tischer, 2022. "Time Inconsistency and Overdraft Use: Evidence from Transaction Data and Behavioral Measurement Experiments," Working Papers 2205, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    11. Laureti, Carolina & Szafarz, Ariane, 2023. "Banking regulation and costless commitment contracts for time-inconsistent agents," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    13. Choi, James J. & Haisley, Emily & Kurkoski, Jennifer & Massey, Cade, 2017. "Small cues change savings choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 378-395.
    14. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    15. Jindapon, Paan & Sujarittanonta, Pacharasut & Viriyavipart, Ajalavat, 2022. "Prize-linked savings games: Theory and experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 202-229.
    16. Victor Stango & Joanne Yoong & Jonathan Zinman, 2017. "Quicksand or Bedrock for Behavioral Economics? Assessing Foundational Empirical Questions," NBER Working Papers 23625, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Oscar A. Stolper & Andreas Walter, 2017. "Financial literacy, financial advice, and financial behavior," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 581-643, July.
    18. Dean Karlan & Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Savings by and for the Poor: A Research Review and Agenda," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(1), pages 36-78, March.
    19. Timmons, Shane & Robertson, Deirdre & Lunn, Pete, 2022. "Combining nudges and boosts to increase precautionary saving: A large-scale field experiment," Papers WP722, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    20. Goda, Gopi Shah & Levy, Matthew R. & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron & Tasoff, Joshua, 2020. "Who is a passive saver under opt-in and auto-enrollment?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 301-321.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prize-linked incentives; Debt; Household Finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:204:y:2021:i:c:s0047272721001705. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.