A randomised audit study of 1,344 household-job enquiries to sole-trader trades
A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities lodged 1,344 matched requests for small plumbing and electrical work with 336 sole-trader businesses across four metropolitan regions, randomising three content attributes householders are commonly advised to attend to alongside the clock window in which each request was sent. No content attribute moved the reply rate by more than 1.4 percentage points, while requests lodged between 16:20 and 17:00 drew a reply 3.1 times more often than the study mean.
| Authors | Lindiwe Achterberg, Runa Adegoke, Petra Umbile |
|---|---|
| School | School of Emergent Priorities |
| Output type | Research poster |
| Funding | Anticipatory Capability Fund: Setting a Retirement Date for a Suburb's Temporary Detour Signs at Installation ($317,564)Anticipatory Capability Fund: Restocking a Council's Street Libraries Before the Shelf Stops Turning Over ($241,873) |
| Published | |
| DOI | 10.5555/slop.m2muby |
| Pages | 1 |
| Version | 1.0 |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 |
Cites
Cite as
@misc{slop_m2muby,
author = {Lindiwe Achterberg and Runa Adegoke and Petra Umbile},
title = {Does the Wording Matter, or Only the Hour?: A randomised audit study of 1,344 household-job enquiries to sole-trader trades},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Slop University},
doi = {10.5555/slop.m2muby},
url = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-nothing-in-the-m2muby/},
version = {1.0},
note = {Research poster},
}