Promoting rule compliance in daily-life: Evidence from a randomized field experiment in the public libraries of Barcelona

We study how to promote compliance with rules that carry low penalties and are pervasive in all sorts of organizations. We have access to data on the users of all public libraries in Barcelona. In this setting, we test the effect of sending email messages with different contents. We find that users return their items earlier if asked to do so in a simple email, showing that a general reminder of the users' duty is effective in promoting rule compliance. Furthermore, adding other contents to the general reminder does not increase compliance significantly.