Nudging attention to evidence resources in Latin America: what works?

Many observers call for more efforts to integrate scientifically rigorous impact evaluations into policy streams, though government officials frequently self-report that they rarely utilize such evidence. Previous research has found that small “nudges” in communications content, style, or source can affect behavior in a wide variety of contexts. To test how nudges might impact bureaucrats’ willingness to investigate evidence resources, researchers sent email invitations to 180,000 public officials in Latin America. This study probes those officials’ behavioral responses to those invitations by clicking a link for a website designed to provide scientific evidence in a convenient and accessible format. It primarily reports on the effects of three treatment arms: motivational prompts, messenger nationality, and relevance of an example study. Results indicate little credible evidence for any of the hypotheses, though there is some modest evidence of messenger effects. All nudges were compared to a placebo treatment, noting that a new website offered simplified policy-relevant evidence. Broadly, these results suggest that encouraging government officials’ attention to evidence resources is a difficult problem that is relatively insensitive to nudges that promote behavioral responses in other contexts.