Endowed progress effect and artificial advancement

Artificial advancement, also called the endowed progress effect, means giving someone a head start on a goal, such as a loyalty card that already has stamps or an onboarding checklist with the first step done. In the best-known study, people with a head start were more likely to finish. It fits signup flows, setup checklists, loyalty programs and long forms, as long as the head start is real and the task needs enough steps for progress to matter.

How to do it

1. Pick a multi-step goal your users often abandon: setting up an account, finishing a profile, completing a course, or earning a reward.
2. Count the steps and show them. A visible bar, checklist or stamp row makes progress something people can see.
3. Credit something they already did. The cleanest head start is a step the user actually completed, such as "Account created" or "Email verified," shown as done on the first screen.
4. Keep the total effort the same, or only slightly bigger. In the car wash study below, both cards needed eight purchases. The pre-stamped card just showed ten spaces with two filled in.
5. Give a reason for the head start: "Thanks for signing up" or "You've already connected your calendar." Don't hand out progress with no explanation.
6. Make the next step small and obvious, and put it right next to the progress display.
7. Test it. Compare completion of the key step (not just clicks on the checklist) between a flow with the head start and one without.

The research

The effect comes from a 2006 paper by Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèze, "The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort," published in the *Journal of Consumer Research* (volume 32, pages 504 to 512). In their car wash field experiment, one loyalty card needed 8 stamps for a free wash. The other needed 10 stamps, but two were filled in during a sign-up promotion. As one summary reports, 19% of members with the first card redeemed a free wash, compared with 34% with the second. 34 divided by 19 is about 1.8, so about 79% more people finished, not 178% more. See the journal abstract, the bibliographic record on Crossref and Jonathan Becher's summary.

What it looks like in practice

Say you run a scheduling app with a five-step setup: create account, connect calendar, set availability, share your link, get a first booking. When someone signs in with Google, their calendar connects automatically, so the checklist opens at "2 of 5 done" with the reason written beside it: "Calendar connected via Google." Compare that with a flow that starts at "0 of 5." Measure how many people reach the first booking in seven days, and see whether those people are still active a month later.

When it backfires

• A fake head start can feel manipulative. Progress should reflect something done. Crediting steps nobody completed, or a bar that jumps with no explanation, can look like a trick.
• The reason matters. The paper's abstract lists "the reason, if any, offered for the endowment" as a moderator of the effect, and Becher's summary says it disappeared when no reason was given for the head start. Always say why the user has progress.
• Evidence is thin outside the original setting. The best-known figures come from one car wash and loyalty cards. There is no public data on how large the effect is for software onboarding, so test it on your own flow.
• Completion is not the same as value. Pushing more people through a checklist helps only if the checklist leads to something they care about. Measure activation and retention, not checklist completion.
• Small head starts may not register. The car wash card gave 2 of 10 stamps, 20% of the card. One filled step out of 25 is a much smaller share, so trim the steps first.

Questions people ask

What is the endowed progress effect? It is the finding that people work harder toward a goal when they have been given some progress already, even if the total work required is unchanged.

Can I use it for onboarding? Yes, if the credit is for real actions, as in the walkthrough above. See celebrate milestones for a related way to mark progress.

Sources

• Journal of Consumer Research abstract, Nunes and Drèze, 2006, read Oct 8, 2026
• Crossref record: The Endowed Progress Effect, Nunes and Drèze, 2006, read Oct 8, 2026
• Endowed Progress Effect: When Head Starts Are An Illusion, Jonathan Becher, read Oct 8, 2026