We’re kicking off a week highlighting recent capstone projects from UBC’s Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights!
As part of the Class of 2024, Tim Hannan, Janet Hankins, Brent Novikoff, and Breanna Gregerson worked with WorkSafeBC and advisor Kirstin Appelt to conduct a project “Increasing Personal Optional Protection (POP) Enrolment to Protect Self-Employed Workers“.
Summary:
This project aimed to increase uptake of Personal Optional Protection (POP), an optional insurance product offered by WorkSafeBC to self-employed workers in British Columbia who fall outside the provincial no-fault insurance system for workplace injuries. In a 2×2+1 randomized controlled trial, four email reminders were tested against a control no-reminder condition: The “inform” email included details about POP, the “inform plus head start” email included the POP details plus a link to the POP application, the “business loss aversion” email warned about potential impacts of adverse events, and the “business loss aversion plus head start” email included the warning plus the link. None of the email reminders significantly increased POP application rates. However, all four emails were opened at a higher rate than WorkSafeBC’s general benchmark. Building on these results, the project team recommends email reminders as a potential communication channel in parallel with conducting further research to inform next steps.
Keywords: behavioural insights, nudge, reminders, loss aversion, insurance, injury, workplace, program uptake
Read this and other working papers from the Advanced Professional Certificate and DIBS faculty.