Nudges and behavioral interventions have become a popular tool to stimulate prosocial behavior. Little is known, however, on how to design effective social interventions in contexts in which the descriptive norm is low, i.e. when a desirable behavior is only practiced by a minority within the...

Non-pecuniary incentives motivated by insights from psychology ("nudges") have been shown to be effective tools to change behavior in a variety of fields. An often unanswered question relevant for public policy is whether these promising interventions can be scaled up. In cooperation with a...

A large fraction of households have very little savings buffer and are therefore vulnerable to financial shocks. This paper examines whether a social norm nudge can induce such households to save more. We ran a large-scale field experiment at a retail bank in the Netherlands. We find that...

A large fraction of households have very little savings buffer and are there-fore vulnerable to financial shocks. We examine whether a social norm nudgecan stimulate such households to save more by running a small-scale survey ex-periment and a large-scale field experiment at a retail bank in...

In an experimental setup we investigate the effect of providing a list of default charities on donation decisions. In the treatment group, subjects can either specify a charity of their choice, or select one from a list of five well-known charities; in the control group we do not provide the...

In an experimental setup we investigate the effect of two different choice architectures on donation decisions. In the treatment group, subjects can either specify a charity of their choice, or select one from a list of five well-known charities; in the control group we do not provide a list. In...

We test the effect of framing of a menu on the choice of ordering climate friendly dishes in a randomized controlled experiment. Rearranging the menu in favor of vegetarian food has a large and significant effect on the willingness to order a vegetarian dish instead of meat. We show that there...

We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects on people's behavior of reminders about investment activities (i.e. with up-front costs and delayed benefits), such as education and healthy behavior. By means of a randomized field experiment, we show that simple weekly reminders...