The Effect of Nudging on Compliance with Individual Prevention Measures against COVID-19: An Online Experiment on Greek University Students

Ioannis Emmanouil, Manolis Diamantis, Dimitris Niakas and Vassilis Aletras ()
Additional contact information
Ioannis Emmanouil: Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia St., 54636 Thessaloniki, Greece
Manolis Diamantis: School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, 18 Aristotelous St., 26335 Patra, Greece
Dimitris Niakas: School of Social Sciences, Hellenic Open University, 18 Aristotelous St., 26335 Patra, Greece
Vassilis Aletras: Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia St., 54636 Thessaloniki, Greece

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Nudging has often been suggested as a means to promote health care efficiency and effectiveness by influencing behavior without restricting choice; its usefulness, however, has not been adequately assessed. We examined the effect of an altruistically framed awareness message about the novel coronavirus on the intention to comply with individual prevention measures against infection. A total of 425 Greek postgraduate students, which were randomly assigned into a treatment group and a control group, filled out a questionnaire on compliance and future intention to comply with six preventive measures. The results indicate that the altruistic message did not manage to influence the intention to comply. Moreover, compliance was positively associated with risk perception, whereas women showed both higher compliance and risk perception than men. Vulnerability to the novel coronavirus and a positive vaccination status against it were accompanied by a greater perception of risk, while one’s personal history of COVID-19 was associated with a lower intention to comply, lower risk perception, and higher health risk preferences. We conclude that nudging interventions should be evaluated before being adopted in practice, taking into account timing, target groups, and means of communication.

Keywords: COVID-19; nudge; framing; preventive behavior; behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/31/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/31/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2023:i:1:p:31-:d:1306992

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().