We examine the effectiveness of a behavioural intervention designed to increase surplus collection rates for pawnbroking customers.
Surpluses are funds owed when a pawned item sells for more than the loan amount. Despite existing processes to notify consumers of surpluses, our pawnbroking sector review in 2018 found that over £1 million in surpluses remained unclaimed annually.
Using a novel behavioural design approach, in partnership with a firm, we developed two interventions to improve surplus collection rates. The first intervention, a new reminder letter for customers, doubled collection rates in 30 days. We report the full design process and results for the letter study in Occasional Paper 59.
This research note describes and evaluates the second intervention, a store-side ‘flag’, which automatically notifies staff when a customer who is owed a surplus returns to a store.
We found that the intervention increased surplus collection rates by nearly 44%. The store-side flag provides a strong example of a low-cost, scalable solution that supports improved customer outcomes and removes barriers to action. This research highlights the importance of proactive design in achieving better outcomes by influencing both customer and staff behaviours.
Authors
Paul Adams, Chris Burke, Alexandra Chesterfield, Lucy Hayes, Steven Human, Bhavini Parmar, Laura Smart, Anna Whicher.
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