Many low-income households in the US miss out on social safety net benefits because of the information, compliance, and psychological costs associated with take-up of government assistance. Yet, the empirical evidence on the impact of learning and psychological costs on take-up, and how to reduce them, is mixed. Leaning on an administrative burden framework, this paper measures the role of reducing learning costs and stigma on demand for rental assistance in two field experiments (N = 117,073) conducted in two US cities. We find that providing information about emergency rental assistance increased program application requests by 52% compared to a no-communication control group. Moreover, subtle framing changes aimed at destigmatizing rental assistance increased engagement with the communication by 36% and increased application requests by about 18% relative to an information-only group, with potentially larger effects for renters of color. In two subsequent online experiments (N = 1,258), we document that the destigmatizing framing reduces internalized stigma, without affecting perceptions of the program itself.

中文翻译：

---

改善社会安全网的实施：耻辱的作用

由于与接受政府援助相关的信息、合规性和心理成本，美国许多低收入家庭错过了社会安全网福利。然而，关于学习和心理成本对接受的影响以及如何减少它们的经验证据是好坏参半。本文依靠行政负担框架，在美国两个城市进行的两项实地实验（N = 117,073）中衡量了降低学习成本和租金援助需求耻辱的作用。我们发现，与无通讯对照组相比，提供有关紧急租赁援助的信息使计划申请请求增加了 52%。而且，与仅提供信息的群体相比，旨在消除租赁援助污名化的微妙框架变化使沟通参与度增加了 36%，申请请求增加了约 18%，这对有色人种租房者可能产生更大的影响。在随后的两个在线实验（N = 1,258）中，我们记录了去污名化框架减少了内在的污名，而不影响对程序本身的看法。