European Central Bank research finds in-person visitor lectures better anchor public inflation expectations to the 2% target

The European Central Bank published a blog-based research summary of a field experiment suggesting that direct, in-person communication with non-expert visitors can improve monetary policy understanding and bring medium-term inflation expectations closer to the ECB’s 2% inflation target, with the largest impact among visitors who start with little monetary policy knowledge. The experiment covered 117 on-site visitor sessions in Frankfurt between December 2022 and May 2025 with 5,000 participants. Groups were randomly assigned to a treatment lecture on the ECB’s monetary policy framework and decisions, a placebo lecture on ECB tasks unrelated to monetary policy (such as banking supervision), or a control setup where the post-lecture questions were asked before the lecture. Compared with the control group, the share of participants reporting inflation expectations in line with the 2% target was 15 percentage points higher in the treatment group, rising to over 40 percentage points among those with the lowest prior knowledge. The post also reports stronger anchoring when visitors were addressed in their native language. The authors argue that the findings support more tailored and multilingual public communication, alongside longer-term educational efforts, and suggest complementing direct engagement with broader indirect channels such as social media, traditional media and accessible ECB resources. They note that the views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the ECB and the Eurosystem.