Hengchen Dai

Behavioral scientist (UCLA Anderson) who is the connective throughline of the vault's Fresh Start Effect thread: first author on the foundational temporal-landmark work (Dai, Milkman & Riis, Management Science 2014 / Psychological Science 2015) that established the individual-level mechanism, and co-author on its own workplace extension (Beshears, Dai, Milkman & Benartzi 2021), which deployed the effect through employers yet kept the unit of analysis on the individual. She is the single figure whose work spans both sides of the vault's individual-to-organizational question — which is why the answer to that question is "the mechanism stays individual" rather than "no one tried it near organizations."

References

• claim-fresh-start-effect-requires-subjective-new-beginning-framing — foundational mechanism (Dai, Milkman & Riis 2014/2015)
• claim-beshears-2021-fresh-start-savings-intervention-stays-individual-level — her own workplace-savings extension, unit stays individual
• observation-fresh-start-effect-extensions-stay-individual-not-collective — the synthesis her work anchors
• question-fresh-start-effect-extends-to-collective-organizational-scale — the question her body of work resolves