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Nudging with reminders – the role of beliefs and emotions

Last registered on March 23, 2019

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Nudging with reminders – the role of beliefs and emotions
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004018
Initial registration date
March 18, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 23, 2019, 8:12 PM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Copenhagen

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Aarhus University
PI Affiliation
WZB

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2019-03-18
End date
2019-10-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This study aims to identify the potential risks that can result from using one of the most popular nudges, reminders, to change behavior. We analyze what drives reminder response and in particular the role of reminders as a means to overcome attentional problems, informational limitations or invoke emotions such as guilt or reassurance. The method of research is a large-scale field experiment.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Barron, Kai , Christina Gravert and Mette Trier Damgaard. 2019. "Nudging with reminders – the role of beliefs and emotions." AEA RCT Registry. March 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4018-1.0
Former Citation
Barron, Kai , Christina Gravert and Mette Trier Damgaard. 2019. "Nudging with reminders – the role of beliefs and emotions." AEA RCT Registry. March 23. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4018/history/43952
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We are working together with a mobile-health provider in Cape Town to study the effect of text message reminders on medication adherence for pregnant women.
Intervention (Hidden)
Our experiment is designed to target the following three research question:
Research Question 1: Is the supplement intake adherence for expectant mothers hindered by behavioral constraints or inaccurate beliefs (or knowledge) regarding the magnitude of the health benefits?
Research question 2: What are the benefits and risks of using emotion-laden nudges?
Research question 3: Can we predict adherence by measuring time preferences?
Intervention Start Date
2019-03-19
Intervention End Date
2019-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Response rates to the incentivized tasks
Unsubscription from the messages
Willingness to pay for reminders
Observed time preferences from a task
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The time preferences will be elicited in a task in which the subjects have to write words backward to earn money, they earlier they do the task, the less work it is. We will measure how early they do the task and whether this is consistent with their stated intentions on when to do the task.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Stated adherence
Stated beliefs about the importance of iron supplements
Stated anemia symptoms
Quiz test results
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
There will be several survey outcomes, which will serve as a complement to the main behavioral outcomes and the willingness to pay.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Over the course of 3 months, a randomly selected subset of pregnant women will receive text messages with health information. There will be 6 treatment arms. We will measure their engagement with the program as well as their responses to incentivized tasks and their answers to quiz and survey questions.
Experimental Design Details
The experiment will be an addition to the regular health text messages the organization sends out to expectant mothers. We will select a random subset of mothers for our experiment, who will receive additional text messages over the course of 3 months.

The expectant mothers participating in the study are randomized into one of six treatment groups.
1) Control: Will receive no additional messages on iron supplements than those
provided by the standard MomConnect program.
2) Promise: Will receive no additional messages on iron supplements than those
provided by the standard MomConnect program, except a message during the
treatment period suggesting that they make a promise to their unborn baby
to take iron supplements every day. The promise permanently increases the
weight on emotional utility to mP > m0 where m0 is the baseline weight on
moral utility.
3) Attentional Reminder: Will receive additional messages during the treatment
period about iron supplements with no additional informational content i.e. for this group the probability that MomConnect sends a message is temporarily higher i.e. pR t > p0 t during the treatment period where p0t is the
baseline level in the control and promise treatments. The temporary increase in the frequency of messages is announced and after the treatment period, the probability of receiving a message about iron supplements is again at the baseline level of p0t .
4) Informational Reminder: Will receive pre-announced additional messages about iron supplements with new informational content about the health benefits of taking iron supplements. For this group, MomConnect sends a message
with probability pRt during the treatment period and the messages permanently improve the accuracy of the perceptions of the health benefits to gI > g0 where g0 represents the baseline awareness level. The improvement in accuracy Deltag = gI-g0 is achieved by sending n informational messages. Each of these messages on average improves the accuracy by Dgn . After the treatment period, the probability of receiving a message about iron supplements is again at the baseline level of p0t .
5) Informational Reminder + Promise: Combines the informational reminders with the promise treatment. That is the treatment permanently raises m and g to mP and gI, respectively. The increase in g is delivered gradually over the treatment period and after the treatment period the probability of receiving a message about iron supplements is again at the baseline level of p0t .
6) Time preferences: We develop a novel time preference elicitation task that will elicit the mothers' time preferences using a simple word task. Otherwise the treatment will be identical to the control treatment.
Randomization Method
We will draw a random sample of ca 15,000 mothers from the population of all pregnant women in South Africa who are signed-up to the MomConnect program. Randomization will be done by the software RapidPro.
Randomization Unit
After consent, mothers will be randomly assigned to one of the 6 treatments. Within the treatment 6, there will be an additional sub-experiment where mothers will be randomized into 4 incentive levels for one of the sub-tasks.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No clusters
Sample size: planned number of observations
15,000 women will be invited.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
2500 mothers per groups will be invited. We anticipate a response rate of 25%, so 625 mothers per treatment arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Because variation in outcomes is hard to anticipate, we did not do a formal power calculation.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Pharma Ethics
IRB Approval Date
2019-01-10
IRB Approval Number
181021588
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials