Improving Pension Information: Experimental Evidence on Learning Using Online Resources
By Denise Laroze, Charles Noussair, Gabriela Fajardo, Ximena Quintanilla, Paulina Granados, Pedro Vallette & Mauricio López Tapia
When planning for retirement, deciding what to do with one’s pension funds is a high-stakes, one-shot decision. It is often described in technical jargon that few people understand. Not surprisingly, individuals find the pension selection process stressful. As a consequence, many pay for advice or miss out on benefits they are eligible for because of the opacity of the retirement process. We consider whether the learning process can be eased by providing information in video format (vs. the standard textual format) and by changes to the user interface of the websites on which individuals learn about their pension options. The results of both a field experiment with 50 to 70-year-old participants and a laboratory experiment with university students both suggest that videos are significantly and substantively more effective in increasing the number of correct responses to a retirement comprehension test. The significance of this effect is robust to changes in the content of the videos, with equivalent impact in private and public pension schemes. The study is conducted in association with the Chilean pension authority (Superintendencia de Pensiones) and experts from the National Social Security Organization of Chile (Instituto de Previsión Social).
Source SSRN
