Person:

Lasky-Fink, Jessica

This paper documents the existence of a “Formality Effect” in government communications. Across three online studies and three field experiments in different policy contexts (total N = 67,632), we show that, contrary to scholar and practitioner predictions, formal government communications are more effective at influencing resident behavior than informal government communications. In exploring mechanisms, we show that formality operates as a heuristic for credibility and importance. Recipients view the source of a formal letter as more competent and trustworthy, and view the request itself as more important to take action on, despite no change in comprehension nor in perceived ease of taking action. These findings have immediate implications for government communicators and open the door for a renewed focus on how the design and presentation of information impacts behavior.

Many low-income households in the US miss out on social safety net benefits because of the information, compliance, and psychological costs associated with take-up of government assistance. Yet, the empirical evidence on the impact of learning and psychological costs on take-up, and how to reduce them, is mixed. Leaning on an administrative burden framework, this paper measures the role of reducing learning costs and stigma on demand for rental assistance in two field experiments (N = 117,073) conducted in two US cities. We find that providing information about emergency rental assistance increased program application requests by 52% compared to a no-communication control group. Moreover, subtle framing changes aimed at destigmatizing rental assistance increased engagement with the communication by 36% and increased application requests by about 18% relative to an information-only group, with potentially larger effects for renters of color. In two subsequent online experiments (N = 1,258), we document that the destigmatizing framing reduces internalized stigma, without affecting perceptions of the program itself.

Stigma features prominently in debates about the social safety net, but empirically disentangling its role has left open many questions about whether it is a meaningful—or movable—barrier to take-up. Through four nationally representative studies (N = 11,164) and a new four-dimensional validated scale, we quantify the role that stigma plays in shaping take-up (1) directly, by impacting beneficiary behavior, and (2) indirectly, by influencing program design. We find that a one standard deviation (SD) increase in stigma is associated with a 9-19 percentage point decrease in willingness to apply for benefits among low-income respondents. It also predicts a 0.08-0.40 SD increase in society’s preferences for policies and program design features that could reduce program access. In both cases, we show that stigma explains more of the variation in policy preferences than any individual respondent characteristic, including political ideology. Notably, program design causally impacts stigma in competing ways: more expansive eligibility criteria reduce stigma, while implementation designs that would simplify access increase stigma. Together, these findings suggest that stigma should be considered both an individual and structural barrier to participation in the social safety net, where it both shapes and is shaped by policy design choices.