Bandwagoning, free-riding and heterogeneity in influenza vaccine decisions: an online experiment

Matteo Galizzi, Krystal W. Lau, Marisa Miraldo and Katharina Hauck

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: ‘Nudge’-based social norms messages conveying high population influenza vaccination coverage levels can encourage vaccination due to bandwagoning effects but also discourage vaccination due to free-riding effects on low risk of infection, making their impact on vaccination uptake ambiguous. We develop a theoretical framework to capture heterogeneity around vaccination behaviors, and empirically measure the causal effects of different messages about vaccination coverage rates on four self-reported and behavioral vaccination intention measures. In an online experiment, N = 1365 UK adults are randomly assigned to one of seven treatment groups with different messages about their social environment's coverage rate (varied between 10% and 95%), or a control group with no message. We find that treated groups have significantly greater vaccination intention than the control. Treatment effects increase with the coverage rate up to a 75% level, consistent with a bandwagoning effect. For coverage rates above 75%, the treatment effects, albeit still positive, stop increasing and remain flat (or even decline). Our results suggest that, at higher coverage rates, free-riding behavior may partially crowd out bandwagoning effects of coverage rate messages. We also find significant heterogeneity of these effects depending on the individual perceptions of risks of infection and of the coverage rates.

Keywords: behavioral economics; free-riding; influenza; online experiments; social norms; vaccines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2022-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hea
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Published in Health Economics (United Kingdom), 1, April, 2022, 31(4), pp. 614 - 646. ISSN: 1057-9230

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Journal Article: Bandwagoning, free‐riding and heterogeneity in influenza vaccine decisions: An online experiment (2022)
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