The oft-quoted line from the film Field of Dreams, “if you build it, [they] will come,” suggests a straightforward path between people and the things that are good for them. Present individuals with favorable opportunities, the theory goes, and they’ll seize them.

It is rarely that simple. When one of the authors interviewed a woman about why she doesn’t claim social support from an assistance program run by an NGO in her country — despite her eligibility for payments — her response provided a vivid account of why “just building it” is far from sufficient:

First, I need to get a letter from our neighborhood chief … Then, I need to fill out over 12 pages of forms … including a bank statement. Then I need to wait three to four hours in a queue. At this point, I have lost a day’s pay, spent a lot of money driving around, and have no guarantee that I will get through the line to submit the forms.

The long-term economic benefits she’d receive from the program would have far outweighed the short-term costs she’d incur dealing with the administrative process. But she still did not apply.

We see this scenario play out time and again in many domains, including health care and wellness programs, educational opportunities, workplace incentives, subsidized retirement savings, and corporate benefits of various kinds. Although the contexts may be very different, these situations all raise the same pressing questions: Why don’t people do things that are unambiguously good for them? And how can leaders and decision makers help people overcome the visible and invisible barriers to taking up these opportunities?