Can Survey Participation Alter Household Saving Behaviour?

Abstract

We document an effect of survey participation on household saving.Identification comes from random assignment to modules within a population-representative Internet panel.The saving measure is based on linked administrative wealth data.Households that responded to a detailed questionnaire on needs in retirement reduced their non-housing saving rate by 3.5 percentage points, on a base of 1.5%.The survey may have acted as a salience shock, possibly with respect to reduced housing costs in retirement.Our findings present an important challenge to survey designers.They also add to the evidence of limited attention in household financial decision making.Much empirical research in economics analyses data from surveys of individuals and households.The development of panel surveys has allowed researchers to assess and account for heterogeneity and dynamics in economic behaviour.However, repeated data collection from the same individuals or households brings a risk of 'survey effects' the possibility that questioning individuals about their actions or attitudes in a particular domain can alter their later behaviour.Finding significant survey effects in important areas of economic research would require a rethinking of data collection strategies.More positively, finding such effects might also provide insight into the cognitive processes underlying broader economic behaviour.In this article, we test for survey effects in a central domain of economic research: household saving behaviour.In particular, we test whether being asked questions about retirement income needs leads to changes in household saving behaviour.Recent work in behavioural finance suggests possible mechanisms for survey effects on saving behaviour.Limited attention means that individuals tend to overlook some of the consequences of their decisions (DellaVigna, 2009).If those unnoticed consequences materialise in the future, as do the benefits of saving today, this results in biases that are similar to those induced by limited self-control (Karlan et al., 2012).However, in contrast to self-control problems, limited attention suggests that behaviour might be corrected by focusing individuals' attention on the aspects they are missing.For example, recent literature suggests that sending out mailings can induce desired

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