Psychological ownership interventions increase interest in claiming government benefits

Wendy De La Rosa (), Eesha Sharma (), Stephanie M. Tully (), Eric Giannella and Gwen Rino
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Wendy De La Rosa: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Eesha Sharma: Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755
Stephanie M. Tully: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Eric Giannella: Data Science, Code for America, San Francisco, CA 94103
Gwen Rino: Data Science, Code for America, San Francisco, CA 94103

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021, vol. 118, issue 35, e2106357118

Abstract: Each year, eligible individuals forgo billions of dollars in financial assistance in the form of government benefits. To address this participation gap, we identify psychological ownership of government benefits as a factor that significantly influences individuals’ interest in applying for government benefits. Psychological ownership refers to how much an individual feels that a target is their own. We propose that the more individuals feel that government benefits are their own, the less likely they are to perceive applying for them as an aversive ask for help, and thus, the more likely they are to pursue them. Three large-scale field experiments among low-income individuals demonstrate that higher psychological ownership framing of government benefits significantly increases participants’ pursuit of benefits and outperforms other common psychological interventions. An additional experiment shows that this effect occurs because greater psychological ownership reduces people’s general aversion to asking for assistance. Relative to control messages, these psychological ownership interventions increased interest in claiming government benefits by 20% to 128%. These results suggest that psychological ownership framing is an effective tool in the portfolio of potential behavioral science interventions and a simple way to stimulate interest in claiming benefits.

Keywords: psychological ownership; field experiment; framing; public policy; government benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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