IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v14y2022i4p343-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reminders Work, but for Whom? Evidence from New York City Parking Ticket Recipients

Author

Listed:
  • Ori Heffetz
  • Ted O'Donoghue
  • Henry S. Schneider

Abstract

We investigate heterogeneity in responsiveness to reminder letters among New York City parking ticket recipients. Using variation in the timing of letters, we find a strong aggregate response. But we find large differences across individuals: those with a low baseline propensity to respond to tickets—a natural nudge target—react least to letters. These low-response types, who incur significant late penalties, disproportionately come from already disadvantaged groups. They do react strongly to traditional, incentive-based interventions. We discuss how accounting for response heterogeneity might change one's approach to policy and how one might use our analysis to target interventions at low-response types.

Suggested Citation

  • Ori Heffetz & Ted O'Donoghue & Henry S. Schneider, 2022. "Reminders Work, but for Whom? Evidence from New York City Parking Ticket Recipients," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 343-370, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:343-70
    DOI: 10.1257/pol.20200400
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200400
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E135881V1
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200400.appx
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20200400.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pol.20200400?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lars Behlen & Oliver Himmler & Robert Jäckle, 2023. "Defaults and effortful tasks," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(5), pages 1022-1059, November.
    2. Li, Yuanxiang John & Hoffman, Elizabeth, 2023. "Designing an incentive mechanism for information security policy compliance: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 138-159.
    3. Sinning, Mathias & Zhang, Yinjunjie, 2023. "Social norms or enforcement? A natural field experiment to improve traffic and parking fine compliance," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 43-60.
    4. Christian Traxler & Libor Dušek, 2023. "Fines, Non-Payment, and Revenues: Evidence from Speeding Tickets," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0023, Berlin School of Economics.
    5. Migchelbrink, Koen & Raymaekers, Pieter, 2023. "Nudging people to pay their parking fines on time. Evidence from a cluster-randomized field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

    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:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:4:p:343-70. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.