The Effects of Appointment Delay and Reminders on Appointment-Keeping Behavior

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effects of appointment delay and phone reminders on college students’ appointment-keeping behavior. A significantly higher percentage of students kept their appointments in the 1-day appointment delay condition than in the 15-day delay condition with no reminders in both experiments. Phone reminders provided 1 day prior to the appointment dates increased the percentage of appointments kept in the 15-day delay condition in Experiment 2. In order to assess the shape of the effect of appointment delay, future research should increase the number of values in appointment delay.