A behaviourally informed chatbot increases vaccination rates in Argentina more than a one-way reminder

Dan Brown (), Adelaida Barrera (), Lucas Ibañez, Iván Budassi, Bridie Murphy, Pujen Shrestha, Sebastian Salomon-Ballada, Jorge Kriscovich and Fernando Torrente
Additional contact information
Dan Brown: Behavioural Insights Team
Adelaida Barrera: Behavioural Insights Team
Lucas Ibañez: ECOM Chaco S.A.
Iván Budassi: Gobierno Federal de Argentina
Bridie Murphy: Behavioural Insights Team
Pujen Shrestha: Behavioural Insights Team
Sebastian Salomon-Ballada: Behavioural Insights Team
Jorge Kriscovich: Gobierno de la Provincia del Chaco
Fernando Torrente: CONICET, Universidad Favaloro and Fundación INECO

Nature Human Behaviour, 2024, vol. 8, issue 12, 2314-2321

Abstract: Abstract Maintaining COVID-19 vaccine demand was key to ending the global health emergency. To help do this, many governments used chatbots that provided personalized information guiding people on where, when and how to get vaccinated. We designed and tested a WhatsApp chatbot to understand whether two-way interactive messaging incorporating behaviourally informed functionalities could perform better than one-way message reminders. We ran a large-scale preregistered randomized controlled trial with 249,705 participants in Argentina, measuring vaccinations using Ministry of Health records. The behaviourally informed chatbot more than tripled COVID-19 vaccine uptake compared with the control group (a 1.6 percentage point increase (95% confidence interval, (1.36 pp, 1.77 pp)) and nearly doubled uptake compared with the one-way message reminder (a 1 percentage point increase (95% confidence interval, (0.83 pp, 1.17 pp)). Communications tools designed with behaviourally informed functionalities that simplify the vaccine user journey can increase vaccination more than traditional message reminders and may have applications to other health behaviours.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01985-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:nathum:v:8:y:2024:i:12:d:10.1038_s41562-024-01985-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01985-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().