Directing young dropouts via SMS: evidence from a field experiment

Hervelin Jérémy ()
Additional contact information
Hervelin Jérémy: THEMA Research Center, CY Cergy Paris University, 33 Boulevard du Port, Cergy-Pontoise 95000, France

IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 12

Abstract: Although short message services (SMS) are constantly used to transmit information, little is known about the use of SMS by public institutions to direct people. This paper presents a field experiment in France about the effectiveness of SMS in directing disadvantaged people toward public services. Two types of treatment SMS were provided: one type had its content written in a formal style; the second type SMS style was much informal. All the SMS were individualized and included specific information about the agencies. Results indicate that the SMS had no significant effect on enrollment. There is also no apparent heterogeneous effect according to individual, agency, or location characteristics. In line with other academic evidence, these findings suggest that SMS have very limited effectiveness in directing this population toward public services.

Keywords: youth unemployment; information provision; public policy; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 D64 D83 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2022-0001 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:izajlp:v:12:y:2022:i:1:p:12:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/izajolp-2022-0001

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy is currently edited by Denis Fougère, Juan F. Jimeno and Núria Rodríguez-Planas

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Policy from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().