Report #4: Replication of two studies from “Behavioral nudges reduce failure to appear for court” (Science | Fishbane, Ouss & Shah, 2020)

We ran replications of studies three (3) and four (4) from this paper. These studies found that:* People have less support for behavioral nudges (such as sending reminders about appointment times) to prevent failures to appear in court than to address other kinds of missed appointments* People view missing court as more likely to be intentional, and less likely to be due to forgetting, compared to other kinds of missed appointments* The belief that skipping court is intentional drives people to support behavioral nudges less than if they believed it was unintentionalWe successfully replicated the results of studies 3 and 4. Transparency was strong due to study materials and data being publicly available, but neither study being pre-registered was a weakness. Overall the studies were clear in their analysis choices and explanations, but clarity could have benefited from more discussion of alternative explanations and the potential for results to change over time.