Pre-booked vaccination appointments as a nudge: Evidence from a nationwide intervention

Jakob Moeller, Martin Halla and Tobias Thomas

No 436, DICE Discussion Papers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Abstract: We study the effect of pre-booked COVID-19 vaccination appointments using a na- tionwide campaign in Austria. Leveraging administrative microdata on more than 450,000 initially unvaccinated adults, we exploit cross-state variation in program participation and staggered appointment timing in a difference-in-differences de- sign. Pre-booked appointments increase vaccination on the appointment day by 0.8 percentage points (8 per 1,000), with no evidence of intertemporal substitution. Effects are larger for socio-economically disadvantaged individuals and substan- tially weaker in areas with stronger vaccine skepticism. The findings suggest that behavioral interventions are effective when low uptake reflects frictions, but have limited impact when driven by entrenched skepticism.

Keywords: Behavioral public policy; behavioral frictions; vaccine hesitancy; nudges; pre-booked appointments; COVID-19; administrative data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D83 D91 H51 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/341426/1/1972791419.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:dicedp:341426

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DICE Discussion Papers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().