A Fistful of Dollars - Financial Incentives Improve Retirement Information Search

Rob Bauer; Inka Eberhardt; Paul  Smeets

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3023943

A Fistful of Dollars - Financial Incentives Improve Retirement Information Search

Rob Bauer, Inka Eberhardt, Paul Smeets

Finance

Research output: Working paper / Preprint › Working paper

Abstract

To understand what motivates individuals to become informed about their pension situation, we conducted two field experiments with 245,712 and 257,433 pension fund participants, respectively. We find that lottery-type financial incentives to visit an online personal pension planner are cost effective and increase the rate at which individuals check their pension information. This uptake of pension information led to improved pension knowledge and increased savings behavior three weeks after our intervention. Offering a few large prizes rather than many small prizes is most effective, and financial incentives work when used repeatedly.

Original language	English
Publisher	SSRN
Number of pages	127
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3023943
Publication status	Published - 25 May 2021

JEL classifications

c93 - Field Experiments
d83 - "Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief"

Keywords

Retirement Information Search
Field Experiment
Financial Incentives
Social Norms

Access to Document

10.2139/ssrn.3023943

Cite this

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AB - To understand what motivates individuals to become informed about their pension situation, we conducted two field experiments with 245,712 and 257,433 pension fund participants, respectively. We find that lottery-type financial incentives to visit an online personal pension planner are cost effective and increase the rate at which individuals check their pension information. This uptake of pension information led to improved pension knowledge and increased savings behavior three weeks after our intervention. Offering a few large prizes rather than many small prizes is most effective, and financial incentives work when used repeatedly.

KW - Retirement Information Search

KW - Field Experiment

KW - Financial Incentives

KW - Social Norms

UR - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3023943

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BT - A Fistful of Dollars - Financial Incentives Improve Retirement Information Search

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A Fistful of Dollars - Financial Incentives Improve Retirement Information Search

Abstract

JEL classifications

Keywords

Access to Document

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