Costly Ignorance: Enhancing Consumer Financial Decision Making

Avoiding pension information, or having too little knowledge to responsibly handle a credit card are examples of consumers’ “costly ignorance”. This dissertation therefore researches how to enhance consumer financial decision making. A first study investigates what drives differences in participants’ search for pension information, and shows that beliefs, trust and retirement anxiety are significant factors. A second study demonstrates the power of framing pension communication in a large scale field experiment. A third study reveals that older adults can offset cognitive decline and make better financial decisions because of their higher levels of experience and lower levels of negative emotions.