Robert Kuan

Robert Kuan
  • Doctoral Candidate

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    3730 Walnut Street
    527.4 Jon M Huntsman Hall
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Links: CV, Google Scholar

Overview

Hello! I’m Rob, a fourth-year PhD student at Wharton conducting research on consumer behavior and decision-making.

My current research agenda is focused on studying consumer motivation and self-control, exploring how we can better understand and help individuals improve their financial and health-related decisions. I am particularly passionate about studying behavior in naturalistic settings to test the implications of theories in consumer behavior and judgment and decision-making.

To investigate these questions, I frequently employ large-scale field studies. I have partnered with organizations including the U.S. Department of Education, a major U.S. national pharmacy chain, and a large U.S. financial app and investment platform.

Before starting my PhD, I worked with research labs at Stanford, Wharton, UCLA, and the University of British Columbia. Prior to academia, I worked as a management consultant at Charles River Associates and later served as Director of Data Product Management and Director of Business Development at Personal Capital, a Silicon Valley fintech company.

I received my Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011.

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Research

Milkman, K.L., S.F. Ellis, D.M. Gromet, Y. Jung, A.S. Luscher, R.S. Mobarak, M.K. Paxson, R.A. Silvera Zumaran, R. Kuan, R. Berman, N.A. Lewis Jr., J.A. List, M.S. Patel, C. V an den Bulte, K.G. V olpp, M. V . Beauvais, J.K. Bellows, C.A. Marandola, & A.L. Duckworth (2024). “Megastudy Shows Reminders Boost Vaccination but Adding Free Rides Doesn’t.” Nature.

  • Rob Kuan, Kristin Blagg, Benjamin Castleman, Rajeev Darolia, Jordan Matsudaira, Katherine L. Milkman, Lesley Turner (2025), Behavioral Nudges Prevent Loan Delinquencies at Scale: A 13-Million Person Field Experiment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2416708122 Abstract

    Americans collectively hold over $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, and over the last decade millions of borrowers have defaulted on loans, with serious consequences for their financial health. In a 13-million-person field experiment with the U.S. Department of Education, we tested the effectiveness of different email interventions to inform borrowers about alternative repayment options after a missed loan payment. Our interventions tested whether sending monthly behaviorally-informed emails, providing follow-up reminders, framing benefits in percentage (vs. dollar) terms, and providing just one recommended action step at a time (vs. two) affected borrower outcomes. We find that i) behaviorally-informed emails reduce estimated 60-d delinquencies by 0.42 pp, ii) reminders boost the efficacy of such emails by 0.57 pp, iii) describing potential savings in percentage terms is more effective than describing these benefits in dollar terms, reducing estimated delinquencies by 0.14 pp, and iv) encouraging two actions (i.e., enrollment in income-driven repayment plans and auto debit programs) repeatedly across two emails is marginally more effective than encouraging one action at-a-time across two emails, reducing estimated delinquencies by 0.05 pp. Overall, if scaled to all 13-million borrowers in our experiment, we estimate that our best-performing intervention would have averted approximately 79,800 60-d delinquencies. Our findings i) highlight the benefits of describing potential savings in percentage terms, which may magnify perceived savings for recipients, ii) underscore the risks of oversimplification, and iii) demonstrate that nudges can be an effective, low-cost complement to other policies for reducing delinquencies and supporting borrowers with student loan debt.

Awards And Honors

Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz PhD Fellowship, 2025

Association for Consumer Research — Franco Nicosia Best Competitive Paper Award, 2024

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    Latest Research

    Rob Kuan, Kristin Blagg, Benjamin Castleman, Rajeev Darolia, Jordan Matsudaira, Katherine L. Milkman, Lesley Turner (2025), Behavioral Nudges Prevent Loan Delinquencies at Scale: A 13-Million Person Field Experiment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2416708122
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