---
title: "Hengchen Dai"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Hengchen Dai"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
connects_to: ["fresh start effect","temporal landmark","[[claim-fresh-start-effect-requires-subjective-new-beginning-framing]]","retirement savings / choice architecture","Katherine Milkman"]
---


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