If You Are Going to Pay Within the Next 24 Hours, Press 1: Automatic Planning Prompt Reduces Credit Card Delinquency

Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2018 · Volume 28 · Issue 3

Abstract

People often form intentions but fail to follow through on them. Mounting evidence suggests that such intention-action gaps can be narrowed with prompts to make concrete plans aboutwhen,where, andhowto act to achieve the intention. In this paper, we pushed the notion of plan-concreteness to test the efficacy of a prompt under a minimalist automated calling setting, where respondents were only prompted to indicate a narrower duration within which they intent to act. In a field experiment, this planning prompt significantly helped people to pay their past dues and get out of debt delinquency. These results suggest that minimalist automatic planning prompts are a scalable, cost-effective intervention.

Keywords

Implementation intentions, Commitment, Goals, Financial decision making, Randomized controlled trial

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