New Research Funded: Theme Projects on Inertia and Understanding and Improving Saving Behavior
The Netspar Board of Directors recently awarded two theme project applications grants of €250,000 each, following scientific validation by the Scientific Council and a positive recommendation by the Partner Research Council. This brings the total awarded to long-term research in 2019 to 1 million euros.
About the research:
Developing and Testing a Model of Inertia in Retirement Decisions
It is well known that most people postpone and avoid decisions about their pensions and retirement. In this project, researchers Marijke van Putten (Leiden University) and Marcel Zeelenberg (Tilburg University) attempt to gain a better understanding of why that is and also provide tools for overcoming avoidance behavior. Research findings can help both participants and pension providers prepare for recent and proposed changes to the pension system and take steps to address them, instead of avoiding them. In addition, this project offers relatively simple, inexpensive ways of constructing communications and choice architecture for supporting retirement decisions. This project is scheduled to start July 1, 2019.
Read the project description here.
Understanding and Improving Saving Behavior
In this project, Arno Riedl, Jona Linde, and Peter Werner (all of Maastricht University) work to better understand (pension) saving behavior of Dutch workers and in particular the self-employed. By identifying the drivers of the savings behavior, the researchers hope to provide guidelines for tailor-made policy and the development of smart pension savings products. Pension savers are a very diverse target group. The researchers will map their diverse preferences, expectations (beliefs) and biases. To this end, use is made of insights and methods from behavioral economics, political science and data science and is collaborated with Statistics Netherlands, Institute for Data Science, APG, ZZP Netherlands, and MinSZW. This combination of methods and partners makes it possible to gain a good insight into the conscious and unconscious motives of Dutch workers, in particular self-employed people, and their (pension) saving behavior. This project is scheduled to start September 1, 2019.
Read the project description here.
Theme Projects Already Awarded
- The Causes and Consequences of Retirement: A Sociological Perspective, Kène Henkens (NIDI)
- The Effectiveness of Decision Aids in Pension Communications and the Role of Literacy, Hans Hoeken, Leo Lentz, and Adriaan Kalwij (all of Utrecht University)
