Nudging Student Participation in Online Evaluations of Teaching: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Susanne Neckermann, Uyanga Turmunkh (), Dennie van Dolder () and Tong V. Wang ()
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Susanne Neckermann: Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Uyanga Turmunkh: IESEG School of Management, Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 9221 - LEM - Lille Economie Management, F-59000 Lille, France
Dennie van Dolder: School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, Gustav Mahlerplein 117, 1082 MS Amsterdam, the Netherlands Department of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom
Tong V. Wang: Institute for Advanced Economic Research, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, 217 Jianshan Street, Dalian, Liaoning 116025, P.R. China

Working Papers from IESEG School of Management

Abstract: This paper reports the results of a large randomized field experiment that investigates the extent to which nudges can stimulate student participation in teaching evaluations. The three nudges that we used were designed to either: (1) heighten students’ perceived impact of teaching evaluations, (2) communicate a descriptive norm of high participation, and (3) use the commitment-consistency principle by asking students to commit to participation. We find that none of the nudges were effective: all treatment effects are insignificant and close to zero in magnitude. Exploring heterogeneous treatment effects, we find evidence that the effectiveness of both the impact and commitment treatments differed across students. The impact treatment had a negative effect on the participation of bachelor-level students, but not on that of masterlevel students. The commitment treatment increased participation among students with good average grades, whereas it decreased participation for students whose average grades were poor.

Keywords: : nudges; social norms; descriptive norm; commitment; student evaluation of teaching; participation; response rates; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 D91 H41 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2021-11
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ies:wpaper:e202110

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