Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/242393 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Beiträge zur Jahrestagung des Vereins für Socialpolitik 2021: Climate Economics
Publisher: 
ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Kiel, Hamburg
Abstract: 
In the context of a voluntary remedial math course for university students, we conduct randomized field experiments to study whether social information can help counteract low participation rates. Incoming students receive postal invitation and reminder letters that inform them about past sign-up rates and past evaluations on the usefulness of the course, respectively. On average, we find that neither of the two interventions increases sign-up or participation. Heterogeneity analyses provide evidence that a targeted provision of the invitation letters can be beneficial: i) By increasing the salience of the course, they raise attendance among late enrolling students, which in turn increases their academic performance in the first year of studies. ii) Students whose ex-ante signup probability falls just short of the descriptive norm increase sign-up and participation in response to the social information, while the opposite is true for students whose signup probability exceeds the norm.
Subjects: 
Social Information
Higher Education
Randomized Field Experiment
Remedial Courses
JEL: 
D83
I21
I23
C93
Document Type: 
Conference Paper

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