2017 Theses Doctoral

Exploring the underlying processes and the long term effects of choice architecture

Crookes, Raymond D.

As the application for choice architecture grow, our goal is to better understand both the short and long term effects of our interventions. Many of the world’s most pressing and complicated problems require many actions, instead of a single action. Choice architecture has been shown to be effective on one-and-done problems, but what about the more complicated problems? Can the tool we choose to influence behavior have a positive or negative effect on the likelihood of taking up a second or possibly third behavior? In Chapter 1, we explore the mechanism of risky choice framing, isolating the effect of attraction and repulsion on the number of, and the valence of, thoughts supporting either the risky or riskless outcomes. In Chapter 2, we show behavioral spillover in a lab settings, showing the effects of default setting on not only the initial behavior, but also subsequent behaviors. In Chapter 3, we take choice architecture and explore the effects of different messaging on both short and long term behavioral change.