Bi Project Policy Area: Public governance
To better learn about the U.S. General Services Administration’s USAGov email audience, a bilingual survey was developed to include questions on preferred topics, preferred frequency of email communications, utility of emails, and audience demographics. USAGov sought to learn more about their email audience through the survey and by using behavioral insights to increase survey response.
Voting is a public good in that it benefits society and is an important part of a functioning democracy. Yet, many people fail to cast their ballot on election day because the individual benefits from voting are limited. Generally, people contribute more to public goods when their behavior is made more observable to others. However, voting is inherently private: very few people observe whether you actually show up on election day. In addition, existing channels used to encourage people to vote,…
While potential voters may register and intend to vote, many registered voters ultimately do not participate in elections. In addition, previous studies have not addressed how the impact of the text messages may vary among causal voters compared to habitual voters. Casual voters are defined as those who had previously only voted in the presidential election or major elections. Habitual voters are defined as those who have a higher propensity to vote (in this case, those who voted in each of the…
The project’s goal was to increase voter turnout among potential voters: registered voters who participated in one or fewer primary elections since 2000. Voting is a high-salience, socially important behavior that is essential to a functioning democratic society. While campaigns and organizations spend millions of dollars to increase voter turnout, recent research suggests that simple interventions like facilitating plan-making can help people follow through on their intentions.
Tax amnesties, a limited-time opportunity for a specified group of taxpayers to pay a defined amount of tax liabilities, are broadly used across countries because they generate short-term revenue gains. However, evidence suggest that tax amnesties fail to have long-term effects, and in some cases, they generate negative effects on compliance. With the goal of evaluating the impact of tax amnesties, this experiment relies on the behavioral principle of limited attention and redesigns the…