Framing the future: Using investment and assurance frames to encourage retirement information search

Many pension plan participants are inactive. They do not look up information on their retirement income and discover pension gaps too late to take action. We analyze how pension communication framing interventions motivate participants to acquire retirement income information. First, we show that classical loss frames (vs. gain) are an effective intervention, but also evoke negative perceptions and evaluations. Second, we develop new frames (assurance, investment) tapping into the same psychological mechanisms while avoiding loss wording. Based on a field experiment with 7,315 pension plan participants we find assurance framing to be an effective intervention that also avoids evoking negative evaluations.