Ilana Brody’s research while affiliated with University of California, Los Angeles and other places

Behavioural economics and behavioural public policy have been fundamental parts of governmental responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was not only the case at the beginning of the pandemic as governments pondered how to get people to follow restrictions, but also during delivery of the vaccination programme. Behavioural Economics and Policy for Pandemics brings together a world-class line-up of experts to examine the successes and failures of behavioural economics and policy in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. It documents how people changed their behaviours and use of health care and discusses what we can learn in terms of addressing future pandemics. Featuring high-profile behavioural economists such as George Loewenstein, this book uniquely uncovers behavioural regularities that emerge in the different waves of COVID-19 and documents how pandemics change our lives.

The efficacy of behavioral interventions targeting policy-relevant outcomes often varies across sub-populations. Understanding and planning for heterogeneous treatment effects is critical to developing nuanced theories of human behavior and offering more useful guidance to policymakers. We identify one theory-driven source of heterogeneity in the effectiveness of behavioral interventions: individuals’ baseline motivation to adopt the encouraged activity. Through online and field experiments testing ways to encourage flu vaccination (total N=17,362), we show that an information intervention, designed to enhance interest in vaccination by correcting misconceptions, increased vaccination intentions and uptake only for those with low baseline motivation to get vaccinated. Conversely, an intervention designed to encourage follow-through by increasing the salience and convenience of vaccination only boosted vaccine uptake for those with high baseline motivation. This work highlights that aligning the mechanisms targeted by an intervention to match individuals’ baseline motivation is a theory-driven way to customize behavior change interventions.

Behavioral interventions applied to policy problems often yield varying degrees of success in different sub-populations. Understanding and planning for heterogeneous treatment effects is critical to developing nuanced theories of human behavior and offering more useful guidance to policymakers. In this research, we identify one source of heterogeneity in the effectiveness of behavioral interventions: individuals’ baseline motivation to adopt the encouraged activity. Previous studies suggest that people may not take up an activity either because (1) they have no intentions to adopt it or (2) they fail to follow through despite intending to do so. In a series of preregistered experiments (two online and one in the field; total N = 17,362), we tested two approaches to encouraging influenza vaccination, aiming to either change intentions or facilitate follow-through. The information intervention, designed to enhance intentions by targeting misconceptions, increased vaccination intentions and uptake only among those with relatively low baseline motivation. The follow-through intervention, designed to enhance the salience and convenience of getting vaccinated, increased vaccine uptake only among those with relatively high baseline motivation. This work highlights the importance of aligning the mechanisms targeted by an intervention with individuals’ baseline motivation as a fruitful way to customize behavior change interventions.