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The Inclusive Economy
Innovation Must-Read: Challenging our Assumptions
By Sean Luechtefeld on 04/07/2010 @ 06:57 PM
Our latest lesson in what it means to be an innovator comes from the Applying Behavioral Sciences in the Real World blog, where Consumer Credit Counseling Service of the Delaware Valley (CCCSDV) expert Valerie Klein discusses some compelling research they’ve done in regard to incentives.
I last introduced Valerie to you when discussing her research about how changing a form meant individuals were more likely to keep their debt counseling appointments. Valerie’s new research explores the success of incentives, looking both at traditional incentives and pre-incentives, in an attempt to get feedback for some of the products and services offered by CCCSDV.
To read the full text of Valerie’s article, click here.
In short, the distinction between traditional incentives and pre-incentives is simple, yet important. Traditional incentives tell respondents that if they act in a certain way, they will receive the incentive, following an if-x-then-y format. Pre-incentives, on the other hand, offer the incentive prior to the feedback request with no strings attached. In other words, here’s-x-independent-of-y. Such a system seems dangerous, because if I’m interested in profit-maximizing, I’ll take the incentive but not any course of action.
Trying to better understand this notion in relation to other research, CCCSDV conducted a study examining whether or not pre-incentives were as effective as traditional incentives. Ultimately, they found that these incentives were astoundingly more successful than were traditional incentives and no incentives. In fact, individuals were nearly twice as likely to respond to the survey if they had already received the free gift that was meant to serve as an incentive.
It’s funny how innovation works – in this experiment, the new way of doing things cost exactly the same as the old way of doing things. In fact, the new way of doing things didn’t even require new steps – rather, switching the order of the steps in the process was enough to have a significant positive outcome. It seems to me that’s the point of innovation: creative approaches don’t require you to reinvent the wheel, just to rethink the way the wheel is used.
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