Payday Loan Borrowing Behavior in a Field Experiment on Information Disclosure

A field experiment at a national payday lender chain tested the effect of psychology-guided information on borrowing. The study found that information helping borrowers think less narrowly about loan costs reduced loan take-up by about 11% over a 4-month window. The dataset was created by Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago.

Use Cases

• Modeling the impact of information disclosure on financial decision-making based on the described field experiment.
• Analyzing the effect of cognitive bias interventions on high-cost debt usage based on the study's findings.
• Training models to predict consumer response to fee transparency based on the described psychology-guided information.

Strengths

• Data originates from a controlled field experiment at a national chain of payday lenders.
• The study measured a specific, quantifiable outcome: an approximate 11% reduction in loan take-up.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Chicago

Collection Method

Field experiment conducted at a national chain of payday lenders.

Time Range

4-month observation window following the experiment.