2024/03/07 by Ana Cecilia Quiroga Gutiérrez, Stefan Boes · 1 voice
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Economic and Environmental Valuation #Healthcare Policy and Management
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/hec.4820
openalex publication_date 2024/03/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Previous research has shown that individuals do not always make rational decisions when selecting their health insurance, for example, due to the existence of information frictions or mental gaps. We study the effect of specific types of information provision for decision support on health plan choices and test their potential to improve decision quality by implementing a randomized laboratory experiment. We provide personalized and generic aids, differentiate between numerical and visual decision support, and provide one or two optional formats of personalized information. We find that generic aids have no effect on health plan choices while personalized information leads to better choices as measured by several indicators of decision quality. The largest effects were observed for those who "opted in" to visualize personalized information, with immediate and lasting improvements in health insurance decisions. By reducing information frictions, our results suggest that accessible and easy-to-use tools can positively impact health insurance navigation, improve decision-making, and reduce switching costs.