Inplementation of a nudge

This master thesis focuses on nudging, a relatively new behavioral concept with which people could be gently pushed into making the best decision. A proper nudge doesn’t limit the available options and doesn’t force anyone, it only makes it easier for people to choose the best option. Through a field experiment, I study whether a nudge could make debtors pay their outstanding invoices sooner by dividing debtors into five groups and send all groups a different message. Expected was that the social comparison nudge would have most impact on debtors and that this message would give the highest payment rate, like it has been the case in the researches of the British Behavioral Insights Team (Hallsworth, List, Metcalfe & Vlaev, 2014) and the Norwegian government (Bott, Cappelen, Sørensen & Tungodden, 2014). The payment rates of my study showed however, that the group of debtors that received the message with a threatening tone tend to pay their outstanding invoices sooner than the debtors that received one of the other messages. The nudge was almost costless to implement and has increased the percentage of paid invoices. This shows of what importance a nudge could be in the approach of debtors for commercial companies.