 The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Encourages Follow-ThroughHolly Dykstra, Shibeal O' Flaherty and Ashley Whillans No 21442, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: Behavioral interventions often focus on reducing friction to encourage behavior change. In contrast, we provide evidence that adding initial friction to a sign-up process can increase follow-through behavior. In a field experiment with a state department of transportation (N = 27,227), we test whether adding modest friction during sign-up for a carpool platform increases usage. While a more effortful sign-up process leads to 25% fewer sign-ups, overall usage increases. Importantly, these results were only partly explained by selection: using an intent-to-treat analysis, participants with a more effortful sign-up process took 1.6 times more carpool trips per week over four months, leading to more overall trips despite fewer users. In a second experiment with online task work, participants with more effortful sign-up were 37% more likely to return the next day and completed more work overall. These results suggest that adding friction may be an overlooked strategy when follow-through, rather than initial uptake, is the primary goal. Keywords: intention-action gap; follow-through; effort costs; frictions; Field experiment; behavioral science; Transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21442 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
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