Between Intention and Action: Measuring Delayed Execution in Representative Populations

Abstract

Many interactions between individuals and organizations require one party to carry out a simple action during a narrowly defined future opportunity, such as attending a scheduled medical appointment, renewing an insurance contract, or voting on election day. In each case, a decision made now can only be executed later, forcing an intention to survive an imposed delay. We argue that this temporal separation constitutes a distinct and previously overlooked coordination friction, which we term the deferral friction. To identify it, we introduce the Directed Letter Technique, a field experimental method that combines representative population sampling with randomized treatment assignment. We randomly assign 1,600 Dutch households to receive a letter containing a stamped return card that yields €20 when returned according to the experimental instructions. The card can either be returned at any time or only during a four-day window one month later. Requiring execution during the future time window substantially reduces successful completion and disproportionately affects low-socioeconomic-status households. Administrative records show that the experimental measure predicts real-world behavior, while complementary administrative and survey evidence narrows the set of plausible explanations for the observed heterogeneity and points to differences in organizational slack. Together, our findings demonstrate that the deferral friction is an economically meaningful determinant of successful implementation and an overlooked source of implementation failure.