Can we nudge household savings by manipulating the number of savings categories?

A lack of savings is a serious and increasing problem for Americans. Nearly half of American households cannot cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing (US Bureau of Economic Analysis 2017; Federal Reserve, 2018).

In our current project, we are investigating how partitioning of savings categories (vs. presenting them as superordinate categories) influences people's budgeting decisions. With promising results of our first two studies, we are now exploring the mechanisms driving the effect.

#research #decisionscience #partitiondependence #householdbudgeting