Digital nudges offer a cheap and scalable way to motivate job seekers, but they do not always produce the desired results.
Governments around the world are embracing digital nudges. A well-written email costs almost nothing to send and can reach thousands of people instantly. For employment services facing tight budgets, the idea is tempting: help unemployed workers stay motivated, search more actively, and find jobs faster through carefully crafted messages. But digital nudges do not always work as intended.
In a large-scale experiment involving more than 200,000 newly unemployed workers in Sweden, we tested whether motivational emails could improve job-search outcomes. The idea was to address motivational challenges among unemployed job seekers, who often struggle to stay motivated in the wake of rejected job applications.
Some participants received supportive emails designed to foster inner motivation, a form of motivation that comes from pursuing goals because they are personally meaningful, and therefore emphasizing autonomy, personal goals, and choice. Others received controlling emails designed to foster motivation through obligations and pressure. Drawing on a well-established theory of human motivation, these two approaches mirror the classic policy debate over whether “carrots” or “sticks” are more effective in helping unemployed workers return to work. A third group received no motivational emails.
At first glance, the intervention seemed successful. About 72% of recipients opened the emails. Both types of messages also increased compliance with mandatory activity-reporting requirements, showing that they attracted attention and changed behavior.
But attention is not the same as impact.
The ultimate goal was to help people find work. And this is where we obtained some unexpected results. The supportive emails reduced the number of job applications submitted and had weakly negative effects on employment, particularly among men. The controlling emails, meanwhile, had little impact overall and even backfired among job seekers who said that inner motivation was important to them. This is consistent with similar crowding-out effects of inner motivation observed in other contexts.
Why did the messages fail?
The answer may not lie in the messages themselves, but in the context in which they were delivered. Many jobseekers view the Swedish Public Employment Service as a highly monitored environment. In such a setting, messages emphasizing inner motivation and personal goals may seem inconsistent with how jobseekers view the employment service. Rather than encouraging greater search effort, such messages may inadvertently signal that job search is less tightly monitored than previously believed.
The controlling messages may have failed for a different reason. While they increased compliance with activity-reporting requirements, they may primarily have acted as reminders of reporting obligations rather than encouraging genuine changes in search behavior. Moreover, among job seekers with a strong inner drive, these messages may have been perceived as signals of distrust and reduced autonomy, potentially backfiring in a way similar to the crowding-out effects of monetary incentives documented in other settings.
Another lesson extends well beyond unemployment policy. Policymakers often hope that carefully designed nudges can produce meaningful behavioral change at a low cost. Our study suggests that this hope may be challenging to achieve. The messages increased compliance with administrative requirements, but did not improve job-search outcomes.
The implication is that motivation cannot simply be transmitted through an email. Motivation depends not only on the wording of a message, but also on the institutional relationship between sender and recipient. When the two are misaligned, messages may backfire.
© Bart Cockx, Johan Egebark, Greet Van Hoye, Emilie Videnord, and Johan Vikström
Bart Cockx is Professor at Ghent University, Belgium, and IZA@LISER Research Fellow
Johan Egebark is Research Economist at the Swedish Public Employment Service, Sweden
Greet Van Hoye is Associate Professor at Ghent University, Belgium
Emilie Videnord is Research Economist at the Swedish Public Employment Service, Sweden
Johan Viström is Research Leader at IFAU and Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden
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We recognize that World of Labour articles may prompt discussion and possibly controversy. Opinion pieces, such as the one above, capture ideas and debates concisely, and anchor them with real-world examples. Opinions stated here do not necessarily reflect those of the LISER.
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https://wol.iza.org/articles/impact-of-monitoring-and-sanctioning-on-unemployment-exit-and-job-finding-rates by Duncan McVicar