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Prof. Regina Wittenberg Moerman
Professor of Accounting
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

We examine whether visually salient cues can improve borrower decision-making in consumer lending. We conduct a randomized controlled trial on an online lending platform where retail borrowers receive a personalized list of loan recommendations based on their application criteria. We test whether labels highlighting favorable loan attributes, such as lowest interest rate, fastest processing time, or highest approval rate, can mitigate the primacy effect—a tendency to select the first-listed loan on the recommendation list. We find that the label treatment does not meaningfully mitigate this effect. Although visual labels increase the likelihood that a loan is selected, their benefits are largely confined to labels attached to loans appearing first, and to a lesser extent, second on the recommendation list. We further show that a significant subset of borrowers does not apply for labeled loans, particularly when these loans appear lower on the recommendation list. These borrowers exhibit a stronger tendency to rely on simple heuristics, and their loan choices are also more likely to be inferior to those of control borrowers. Overall, our findings underscore the nuanced role of visual cues in shaping financial decision-making.