Effective but fragile? Responses to repeated nudge-based messages for preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection

Shusaku Sasaki (), Hirofumi Kurokawa and Fumio Ohtake
Additional contact information
Shusaku Sasaki: Tohoku Gakuin University

The Japanese Economic Review, 2021, vol. 72, issue 3, No 3, 408 pages

Abstract: Abstract Nudge-based messages have been employed in various countries to encourage voluntary contact-avoidance and infection-prevention behaviors to control the spread of COVID-19. People have been repeatedly exposed to such messages; however, whether the messages keep exerting a significant impact over time remains unclear. From April to August 2020, we conducted a four-wave online survey experiment to examine how five types of nudge-based messages influence Japanese people’s self-reported preventive behaviors. In particular, we investigate how their behaviors are affected by repeated displays over time. The analysis with 4241 participants finds that only a gain-framed altruistic message, emphasizing their behavioral adherence would protect the lives of people close to them, reduces their frequency of going out and contacting others. We do not find similar behavioral changes in messages that contain an altruistic element but emphasize it in a loss-frame or describe their behavioral adherence as protecting both one’s own and others’ lives. Furthermore, the behavioral change effect of the gain-framed altruistic message disappears in the third and fourth waves, although its impact of reinforcing intentions remains. This message has even an adverse effect of worsening the compliance level of infection-prevention behaviors for the subgroup who went out less frequently before the experiment. The study’s results imply that when using nudge-based messages as a countermeasure for COVID-19, policymakers and practitioners need to carefully scrutinize the message elements and wording and examine to whom and how the messages should be delivered while considering their potential adverse and side effects.

Keywords: Infectious diseases; COVID-19; Nudge; Behavioral economics; Altruism; Panel survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42973-021-00076-w 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:spr:jecrev:v:72:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s42973-021-00076-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/42973

DOI: 10.1007/s42973-021-00076-w

Access Statistics for this article

The Japanese Economic Review is currently edited by Michihiro Kandori

More articles in The Japanese Economic Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().