Text Messages that Collect Fines

According to the studies carried out in UK by the Courts Service and the Behavioural Insights Team, text messaging has an impact on fine repayments.

The Experiment

The two organizations worked together to test whether or not sending text messages to people who had failed to pay their court fines would encourage them to pay prior to a bailiff being sent to their door. In an initial trial 1,054 individuals were randomly allocated to five groups. Some were sent no text message (control group), while the other were sent either a standard reminder text or a more personalized message that included the name of the recipient, the amount owed or both. The second trial was conducted on a larger sample (3,633 individuals) and aimed to determine which aspects of the personalized messages were influential in increasing payment rates.

Results

The first trial as well as the second revealed the same pattern: text messages can be highly effective in collecting unpaid fines, especially when they contain the name of the receiver.

Response Rate to Delivered Messages in the Initial Trial

To Remember

Not only people are more likely to pay their overdue fines if they receive a text message containing their name, but the value of repayments will go up at a very low cost.

Source: Haynes, L., Service, O., Goldacre, B. & Torgerson, D (2012). "Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised Controlled Trials". London: Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk on November 19, 2013

Foot in the Door Technique

This technique states that once someone has agreed to a small request he/she is more likely to comply with a larger request.

The Experiment
A team of psychologists telephoned housewives in California and asked them if they would answer a few questions about the household products they used.  If they agreed, they were then asked 8 questions about soap use.

Getting a small "yes" might gain a bigger "yes"

Three days later, the psychologists called again and this time, they asked if they could send five or six men for a 2-hour inventory of all the products in the house.

The study tested not only two conditions (smaller request and no request before the big request), but four:

• Performance: Researchers asked a small request which was completed and later a bigger one.
• Agree-Only: Researchers asked a small request which was not carried out and later the bigger.
• Familiarization: Researchers familiarized the subjects to the requester (there was no small request) and later they asked for the big request.
• One-contact: Researchers had only one contact, asking for a big request.

Results
The percentage of the respondents who agreed to the bigger request was:

• 52.8%  when they had previously answered the 8-question interview;
• 33.3% after they had consented to answer the questions;
• 27.8% when they were familiar with the requester;
• 22.2% without any prior contact.

We may notice that the participants who fulfilled the small request were more than twice as likely to agree to the 2-hour request than those who were asked only the larger request. Note also that mere increased familiarity was not enough to improve subsequent compliance.

To Remember
Getting a small "yes", could get us a bigger "yes".

Source: Freedman, J. L. & Fraser, S. C. (1966). "Compliance Without Pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, no. 4. Retrieved from http://faculty.babson.edu on November 4, 2013