The application of prospect theory in reducing the school tardiness of university students

Reducing student tardiness rates is a long-standing challenge in education that has been studied for over a century. Drawing on Prospect Theory from behavioral economics, a grading method for evaluating class attendance was developed that shifts the incentive structure from earning points for on-time attendance to losing points for tardiness, i.e., utilizing loss aversion bias. This method was implemented across the 2022, 2023, and 2024 academic years, and reductions in tardiness rates were preliminarily observed. The present study replaces numerical points with physical cards. Whether physical cards elicit stronger loss aversion bias than numerical points do remains to be investigated.