2023
Working Paper
HBS Working Paper Series

The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through

By: Holly Dykstra, Shibeal O'Flaherty and A.V. Whillans

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:31

Abstract

Behavioral interventions often focus on reducing friction to encourage behavior change. In contrast, we provide evidence that adding friction can promote long-term behavior change when behaviors involve repeated costly efforts over longer time horizons. In collaboration with the Oregon Department of Transportation, we conducted a field experiment (N = 27,227) to test whether adding friction during an initial sign-up process for a new carpooling platform increases usage. Our results support this possibility: while a more effortful sign-up process led to a 25% decrease in sign-ups to the carpool platform, overall intensity of usage increased. Importantly, these results were only partly explained by selection effects: using an intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, participants who were randomly assigned to the more effortful sign-up process took 1.6 times more carpool trips per day on average during a four-month period as compared to those in the less effortful sign-up process. Of the 9,417 observed trips, the more effortful sign-up group took almost 800 more trips. These effects persisted at eight months, where the ITT estimate was a 33% increase in trips per day. These results suggest that adding friction may be an overlooked strategy that could help to promote behavior change.