Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic will save lives. We tested communication strategies to promote social distancing via an online experiment (N = 500) commissioned by Ireland's Department of Health. A control group saw a current informational poster. Two treatment groups saw similar...

Contact-tracing mobile phone apps have the potential to play a role in controlling the spread of COVID-19, but their success hinges on widespread uptake by the public. We report a study that behaviourally pre-tested COVID Tracker, Ireland's contact-tracing app, prior to its launch with a large...

The introduction of smart technology and dynamic tariffs (such as time-of-use tariffs) provides multiple potential benefits for electricity markets. However, time-of-use tariffs represent an additional complexity for consumer tariff choices in electricity markets. How well consumers may choose...

If an aim of a regulatory body is to act on behalf of the views of its citizenry, then it is important to understand what those views are. This paper, in collaboration with the OECD and the Scottish water industry, presents the results of an online (n= 500) and face-to-face laboratory (n= 100)...

Many households lack savings to cushion them from financial shocks. While behavioural economics offers insights into why some households who want to save may fail to do so, successful behavioural interventions to increase precautionary saving are elusive. We incorporated multiple evidence-based...

We hypothesise and confirm a substantial framing effect in relation to whether people opt for an annuity on retirement. Two laboratory experiments were conducted in collaboration with a national pensions regulator. Individuals demanded a higher annuity rate when pensions were initially conceived...

People underestimate long-term growth in savings because they linearise exponential growth - a phenomenon known as exponential growth bias (EGB). This bias has implications for multiple financial decisions, particularly those relating to pensions. We hypothesised that underestimation might be...

Encouraging consumers to seek out and switch to lower-rate mortgages is important both for the individual consumer's finances and for functioning competitive markets, but switching rates are low. We conducted an experiment with mortgage-holders to test whether official advice on how to select...