Collection of Delinquent Fines: Assessing the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages in the United Kingdom

Last registered on February 25, 2014

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Collection of Delinquent Fines: Assessing the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages in the United Kingdom

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0000253

First published

February 25, 2014, 5:51 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Europe

Primary Investigator

Name

Donald Green

Affiliation

Columbia University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

David J. Torgerson

PI Affiliation

PI Name

Peter John

PI Affiliation

PI Name

Rory Gallagher

PI Affiliation

PI Name

Laura Haynes

PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status

Completed

Start date

2012-01-01

End date

2013-04-30

Keywords

Governance

Additional Keywords

mobile phones, SMS, fees, fines

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a large randomized controlled trial, led by the UK Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team, which was designed to test the effectiveness of mobile phone text messaging as an alternative method of inducing people to pay their outstanding fines. An adaptive trial design was used, first to test the effectiveness of text messaging against no treatment and then to test the relative effectiveness of alternative messages. Text messages, which are relatively inexpensive, are found to significantly increase average payment of delinquent fines. We found text messages to be especially effective when they address the recipient by name.

External Link(s)

Academic Publication

Registration Citation

Citation

Gallagher, Rory et al. 2014. "Collection of Delinquent Fines: Assessing the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages in the United Kingdom." AEA RCT Registry. February 25. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.253-1.0

Former Citation

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

On the Monday after their cases escalated to distress warrant status, HMCTS sent in- dividuals in the text message treatment groups a text (short message service [SMS]) to their mobile phones. These messages alert the owner that the message has arrived; the owner presses a button to see the text on the screen of the phone. Recipients of the text message viewed the sender as “HMCTS.” In the event that the message was undeliverable, the sender received a notification, which we used to classify text messages as “delivered” or “not delivered.”

As shown in Table 1, each message conveyed the same core information. Recipi- ents were reminded about their unpaid fines, warned that failure to pay would result in a warrant, instructed to call a payment hotline number, and given the reference identification number. The experimental variations on the standard treatment (see Table 1) were the personalized (PERSONAL) condition, in which the message was preceded by the recipient’s name; the personalized amount (AMOUNT) condition, in which the recipient was reminded of the total value of the outstanding fine; and the personalized name and amount (PERSONAL/AMOUNT) condition, which included both of these elements.

Intervention Start Date

2012-01-01

Intervention End Date

2012-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

- fine collection (in pounds) within one week of the SMS being sent

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Our experimental design consisted of two phases: In Phase 1, we tested a series of alternative text treatments against a control condition in which no text was sent. The null hypothesis is that text messages fail to increase the payment of delinquent fines, which implies the use of one-tailed tests. In terms of point estimation, this phase of the experiment allowed us to gauge the overall effectiveness of text messaging and to assess tentatively the relative effectiveness of different types of messages. In Phase 2, the NO TEXT group was eliminated from the design, and the aim was to sharpen our estimates of the relative effectiveness of alternative messages. Two-sided tests are used to test the null hypothesis that subjects respond to alternative messages in the same way.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Government statistician randomly allocated each week's group using the random number generator in SPSS

Randomization Unit

individuals

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

In Phase 1, a total of 1,817 subjects were randomly allocated; another 3,633 subjects were randomly allocated in Phase 2.

Sample size: planned number of observations

5,450 individuals

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Phase 1:

NONE text: 366
STANDARD text: 361
AMOUNT text: 364
PERSONAL text: 362
PERSONAL/AMOUNT text: 364

Phase 2:

NONE text: 0
STANDARD text: 912
AMOUNT text: 890
PERSONAL text: 917
PERSONAL/AMOUNT text: 914

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

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