In Simple Words
Imagine having a quick five-minute administrative task on a to-do list, like filing an expense form. On days with high stress or competing demands, starting the task feels like climbing a mountain, so it gets delayed. On a calm day, the exact same task takes almost zero effort. Because high-friction days occur frequently, tasks get postponed indefinitely unless an external prompt forces immediate execution.
Applications across changing call assignments
- Applications without calls
- Comparison applications
- Extra applications caused by calls
- No clear difference in interview yield
Within-person crossover analysis. Extra-application estimate uncertain; no clear difference. This does not directly measure changing psychological costs.
See source →Research question
Jobseekers experience fluctuating psychological, cognitive, or attention costs through time, causing them to repeatedly postpone submitting job applications even for high-value vacancies until application deadlines expire.
Participants
N = 9,838 jobseekers (1,116,952 jobseeker-vacancy matches) in Lahore, Pakistan.
Study Design
Randomized crossover design re-assigning control group jobseekers to phone call treatment in specific matching rounds with jobseeker fixed effects, alongside daily application timing analysis.
Results
Within-jobseeker crossover treatment yields statistically indistinguishable returns between marginal and inframarginal applications (p = 0.503 for interview probability, p = 0.480 for value-weighted interviews). Application submission probability decays exponentially from notification date to deadline date.
Takeaway
Structure platform notifications to provide immediate, one-click execution channels timed during moments of low cognitive burden or immediately preceding hard deadlines.