Slow down, shop around: supporting decision-making about add-on insurance
Remember when we used to travel? A quick flight to Perth for a wedding, a weekend skiing in New Zealand, a few days relaxing with the family on a beach in Bali?
Remember when we used to travel? A quick flight to Perth for a wedding, a weekend skiing in New Zealand, a few days relaxing with the family on a beach in Bali?
While the world has been consumed this year with the immediate, large and fast‑moving threat posed by COVID‑19, another large but creeping health risk has been looming for several years: antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Why did we develop the Behaviour Discovery Tool? Many people come to the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government (BETA) because they are stuck on a problem.
Building on BETA’s work with the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA) on applying behavioural science to the Personal Property Securities Register, BETA and AFSA are evaluating the impact of selected recommendations.
BETA partnered with AFSA on two projects to determine how to best communicate about the consequences of bankruptcy.
In the first project, over 6,500 Australians completed one of six educational tools online that explain the consequences of bankruptcy and then assessed their levels of understanding. A pop-quiz and video were most effective, improving people’s understanding by 27 percentage points above the group that saw no educational tool.
Surveys and questionnaires are indispensable tools for research. At their best, they are a quick, efficient way to gather feedback and opinions from a study population, and they can be an enormously valuable tool for re-designing government processes to better serve people.
BETA and ASIC partnered to design and test information statements to help support consumer decision-making about add-on insurance.
We designed an information statement to remind people add-on insurance is not compulsory, highlight the (usually poor) value-for-money of add-on insurance, and prompt people to consider shopping around for a better deal.