Digitalization and Retirement Contribution Behavior: Evidence from Administrative Data

Retirement savings decisions are increasingly mediated by digital technologies that promise to help individuals plan adequately for their retirement. We exploit a natural experiment to show that introducing a digital pension application increases the probability of making a voluntary retirement contribution by 1.8 percentage points, from an average pretreatment contribution rate of 2.8%. Men and higher-income earners are more likely to respond to the app introduction. We then leverage a field experiment to show that using the app affects contribution behavior mainly through reducing the “hassle” costs of making contributions, rather than by providing information on the associated tax savings.