SL Order effects (Reframe) Flashcards
What are order effects?
Order Effects refers to the influence that the sequence in which information or
choices are presented has on people’s
decisions, judgements, or perceptions.
What are the two main types of order effects?
There are two main types of order effects
o Primacy effect, greater weight is given to information presented first, as it shapes how later information is interpreted and is often more memorable.
o Recency effect, more weight is given to information presented last, as it is fresher in memory and thus more influential.
What is the mechanism?
Cognitive Processing - Limited cognitive capacity, called limited attention bias, to process information means that we often have a hard time grasping many information, which lead us to do pick specific things or use easy heuristic reasoning.
Cognitive Biases - biases like anchoring, primacy and recency effect contribute to the persistence of order effects. Saliency, making things more noticeable make people choose it.
*Kurz, V., 2018. Nudging to reduce meat consumption: Immediate and persistent effects of an
intervention at a university restaurant.
a) Outline the research question and the design of the paper.
b) Using figure 15 describe the results
Question a)
This study examines whether a simple “nudge” can encourage individuals to choose more climate- friendly, vegetarian meals at a university restaurant. With the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from meat consumption, a field experiment was conducted at two university restaurants in Gothenburg, Sweden.
design:
The experiment involved changing the visibility and menu order of vegetarian dishes at one restaurant (the treated group) while leaving the other restaurant unchanged (the control group).
The study ran across three periods: a baseline with no nudge, an intervention period with the nudge applied, and a reversal period where the nudge was removed.
Question b)
Results showed that the nudge led to a 6% increase in the selection of vegetarian meals during the intervention, and sales remained 4% above baseline even after the nudge was removed. This behavior shift resulted in an estimated 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions during the intervention period. However, factors like strong meat preferences, social habits, and menu composition limited the nudge’s impact, as many diners continued to select meat options.
The study concludes that nudges can be an e’ective, low-cost, and scalable method for promoting environmentally friendly choices without a’ecting restaurant profits.
*Lohmann, P. M., Gsottbauer, E., Farrington, J., Human, S., & Reisch, L. A. (2024). An online
randomised controlled trial of price and non-price interventions to promote sustainable food
choices on food delivery platforms.
a) Outline the research question and the design of the paper.
b) Using figure 17 describe the results
c) How much support are there to the different interventions?
Question a)
Does using the nudge order effects have better results on people buying low carbon food in a food app then the traditional tools information and taxation? Does it produce significant health co-benefits, and save food-related GHG emissions?
Design:
Four groups, where people where randomly assigned:
1. nudge - order effect. Placing low carbon restaurants higher on the app.
- information - not a nudge. Giving a symbol saying the restaurant is low carbon, but using the same order as in the control group.
- meat-taxation - not a nudge. Using monetary incentive to make restaurants offering meat dishes relatively more expensive. Using the same order as in the control group.
- Control group. No change to the app, where meat dishes is normally placed highest.
Question b)
Results:
The order effect had a relative advantage over information provision (carbon labels) and price disincentives (via meat taxation) in this experimental setting.
Repositioning (order effect) reduced the average
energy consumption by 5% and the
Nutri-score by 0.13 points (5-point
scale) and affected consumer
welfare the most (satisfaction with
meal seletion)
All sub-groups are significantly
influenced by the repositioning
intervention:
* Repositioning intervention is
effective when:
o Greater knowledge about climate
impact of their food consumption
o Spend less time considering
choices
Heterogeneity:
Repositioning is more effective for females at 15 seconds, but males respond more at
30 seconds.
Lower socio-economic status does not increase susceptibility to nudges.
Higher-educated and climate-concerned participants maintain lower-carbon choices at 30
seconds, while others shift toward higher-carbon options.
Labelling is more effective for participants with higher education, above-median income,
and greater climate concern, likely due to increased environmental awareness.
Effects are strongest under time pressure, engaging intuitive decision-making (System
1), but fade by 90 seconds.
Limitations
The experiment has some limitations and could benefit from investigating long-term effects, a real-world food-delivery platform example, and repetition. But in general repositioning interventions is impactful and cost-effective!
Question c)
Further more did the study look into how much support there where to the different interventions:
More drastic/intrusive policies
face highest level of opposition
- Menu repositioning is one of
the most supported policies relative to to meat taxation
*Ajzenman, N., Elacqua, G., Marotta, L., & Olsen, A. (2021). Order effects and employment
decisions: Experimental evidence from a nationwide program.
a) Outline the research question and the design of the paper.
b) Using figure 17 describe the results
Question a)
“Does the intervention of repositioning schools effectively reduce teacher sorting and market congestion by encouraging candidates to apply more evenly across schools, including those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas?”
The intervention was made because addressing teacher sorting is an important
aspect of promoting the equality of opportunity for students of di’erent socioeconomic backgrounds.
Design:
The experiment was implemented during the 2019 Ecuadorian national teacher selection process. The evaluation involved 18,133 candidates who successfully completed the “merits and public examination” phase of the teacher selection process.
The 18,133 teacher candidates were randomly assigned to two groups where 9,074 were assigned to a control group and 9,059 were assigned to the treatment group. The only difference between the treatment and control group was that the system listed hard-to-staff schools first for candidates in the treatment group. In the control group, schools were displayed in alphabetical order.
Question b)
Results: Candidates in the treatment groups were 3,1 percentage point relative to the control group more likely to accept a teaching position in a hard-to-staff school.
The act of making a decision can be exhausting and effort consuming. Using
the experiment, they find that the order effects are indeed larger when teachers hav e a larger set of open positions to choose from
Individuals put more effort making a decision when faced with many options
The complexity of a task or choice might prevent individuals from making the decision that maximizes their utility. Instead, they make a choice that results in a sufficient utility. In this case, rather than choosing the best open position at a school out of every available alternative and weighting all tradeoffs, candidates may choose the first position that seem to be sufficiently good.
Order effects doesn’t work when:
Examples when it doesn’t work
* Chocolate intervention
* Paper 1 (Uni restaurants reduce meat)
Why doesn’t it work on those cases?
* In our chocolate intervention if
- You initially knew about order effects
- You had more time to reflect over your choices
- Strong underlying preferences for e.g. Knoppers or Dumle.
* Paper 1
- Strong underlying preferences or habits for eating meat.
- Social influences – ordering the same as your friends.
What effect sizes should we expect?
* Chocolate intervention – We would expect less people
to go for the first and the last option.
Tips for implementation of order effects
Main things to remember if you want to design a behavior change intervention using order effects
1. Start with the target behavior:
* Clearly define the specific behavior you want to
change.
2. Understand the context
* Is it in a crowded space, online, or face-to-face?
Knowing this helps in shaping an effective nudge that
fits the situation.
3. Use behavirol insights to design effective interventions
* Leverage from behaviroal insigths e.g. limited attention bias
or reference-dependent preference biases.
4. Design the nudge
* Incorperate different order effects. Think about do your intervention e.g. fit the primacy or recendy effect or
should you instead try to anchor people’s attention initially.
* Be aware of cases when the order effects does not
work.
How difficult do you think it is to
implement this type of nudge compared
to other nudges?
We think it is relatively easy (and
cheap) to implement order effects as
they can be implemented by most
E.g.
* Rearrange the order of food in the To go app or in the university resturant.
* Hard-to-staff schools were listed first for teacher candidates. Zero-cost intervention designed the government of Ecuador.
