Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Precommitment Design

To encourage farsighted behaviors, past research suggests that marketers may be wise to invite consumers to pre-commit to adopt them “later.” However, the authors propose that people will draw different inferences from different types of pre-commitment offers, and that these inferences can help explain when pre-commitment is effective at increasing adoption of farsighted behaviors and when it is not. Specifically, the authors theorize that simultaneously offering consumers the opportunity to adopt a farsighted behavior now or later (i.e., offering “simultaneous pre-commitment”) may signal that the behavior is not urgently recommended; however, offering consumers the opportunity to adopt that behavior immediately and then, only if they decline, inviting them to adopt it later (i.e., offering “sequential pre-commitment”) may signal just the opposite. In a multi-site field experiment (N=5,196), the authors find that simultaneously giving consumers the chance to increase their savings now or later reduced retirement savings. Two pre-registered lab studies (N=5,080) show that simultaneous pre-commitment leads people to infer that taking action is not urgently recommended, and such inferences predict less adoption of recommended behaviors. Importantly, offering sequential pre-commitment increases inferred urgency, predicting greater adoption. Together, this research advances knowledge about the limits and potential of pre-commitment.