Policy Nudges Nationwide: Using Behavioral Interventions to Improve Timely Reporting in Government

• In Event: Time after time: Lessons from three behavioral science research portfolios in government

Abstract

Launching new public programs involves balancing accountability with burdensome reporting requirements. Timely reporting can make government processes more transparent and more efficient, but they can also be cumbersome for potential recipients because of behavioral barriers to compliance: the process of reporting can be confusing or vague, instructions can be overwhelming and hard to process, and procrastination in the face of other priorities is common. In this paper, we report the results from three large-scale field experiments, conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Treasury, which involved varying the email messaging used to request timely reporting by recipients of American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding. The subjects of the experiments were the full population of over 20,000 small towns and cities receiving ARP funding. 

We find that adding a to-do list in bullet points at the top of emails was the most effective of the tested strategies (increasing reporting rates by 3.1 percentage points, or 13%, after 14 days), suggesting that the complexity of communication is an important behavioral barrier inhibiting timely reporting. We also find that changing the subject line of emails to more directly call subjects to action was effective, but somewhat less so (increasing reporting rates by 1.5 percentage points, or 6%, after 14 days). In contrast, three other strategies—invoking social norms, allaying fears of high time costs from reporting, and increasing the frequency of reminders—were not effective.

We found that simplifying instructions through a bulleted to-do list increased responsiveness to actions requested by a federal agency. We estimate that this small change, which came at no additional cost to the agency, could have increased signups by hundreds of NEUs if included in all emails. Furthermore, while the estimated impact of a call to action in the subject line of the emails is weaker, it’s still important to note that the subject line of an email matters. OES and Treasury worked quickly to generate these insights ahead of the April 30 deadline for spending report submissions by NEUs. The speed with which we were able to generate results meant that Treasury could incorporate findings into planned campaigns and is now including to-do lists in its reporting emails to SLFRF recipients.

Author

• Lizzie Martin, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author