Abstract
Vaccination promotion is a crucial strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic; however, individual autonomy should also be respected. This study aimed to discover other-regarding information nudges that can reinforce people’s intention to receive the COVID-19 vaccine without impeding their autonomous decision-making. In March 2021, we conducted an online experiment with 1595 people living throughout Japan, and randomly assigned them either of one control group and three treatment groups that received messages differently describing peer information: control, comparison, influence-gain, and influence-loss. We compared each message’s effects on vaccination intention, autonomous decision-making, and emotional response. We found that the influence-gain nudge was effective in increasing the number of older adults who newly decided to receive the vaccine. The comparison and influence-loss nudges further reinforced the intention of older adults who had already planned to receive it. However, the influence-loss nudge, which conveys similar information to the influence-gain nudge but with loss-framing, increased viewers’ negative emotion. These messages had no promoting effect for young adults with lower vaccination intentions at baseline. Based on the findings, we propose governments should use different messages depending on their purposes and targets, such as comparison instead of influence-loss, to encourage voluntary vaccination behavior.
Keywords: Autonomy; Behavioral public policy; COVID-19; Framing effect; Herd immunity; Nudge; Survey experiment; Vaccine.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, Vaccine, herd immunity, Autonomy, Behavioral public policy, Framing effect, Nudge, Survey experiment, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19 vaccine, vaccination, survey, Japan, Intention, targets, experiment, information, Herd, emotional, Government, Older, control group, treatment group, vaccination intention, Effect, effective, Randomly, conducted, assigned, had no, the vaccine, autonomous, receive, baseline, 【제목키워드】 explain,