Welcome back to the Virtual Australian Health & Human Capital Economics Seminar Series, which goes into its second year. This event is organised by A/Professor Victoria Baranov (UMelb), Dr Sarah Walker (UNSW), Professor Stefanie Schurer (USyd), Dr Rebecca McKibbin (USyd), Professor Adeline Delavande (UTS), and Professor Brenda Gannon (UQ).

The seminar series is open to the public. Sign up HERE for mailing list.

 Can personalized digital counseling improve consumer search for modern contraceptive methods?

Presented by

Berk Ozler

World Bank Development Research Group

Wednesday 7 December

9.00am – 10.00am

Zoom Link

Abstract: Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but like many promising modern technologies take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of a personalized digital counseling intervention addressing informational constraints and choice architecture, cross-randomized with discounts for LARCs. The counseling intervention encourages shared decision-making (SDM) using a tablet-based app, which provides a tailored ranking of modern methods to each client according to their elicited needs and preferences. Take-up of LARCs in the status quo regime at full price was 11%, which increased to 28% with discounts. SDM roughly tripled the share of clients adopting a LARC at full price to 35% and discounts had no incremental impact in this group. Consistent with theoretical models of consumer search, SDM clients evaluated more methods, which led to higher adoption rates for second- or lower-ranked LARCs. Our findings suggest that low-cost individualized recommendations can potentially be as effective in increasing unfamiliar technology adoption as providing large subsidies.