TY - JOUR
T1 - A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies
AU - Milkman, Katherine L.
AU - Gandhi, Linnea
AU - Patel, Mitesh S.
AU - Graci, Heather N.
AU - Gromet, Dena M.
AU - Ho, Hung
AU - Kay, Joseph S.
AU - Lee, Timothy W.
AU - Rothschild, Jake
AU - Bogard, Jonathan E.
AU - Brody, Ilana
AU - Chabris, Christopher F.
AU - Chang, Edward
AU - Chapman, Gretchen B.
AU - Dannals, Jennifer E.
AU - Goldstein, Noah J.
AU - Goren, Amir
AU - Hershfield, Hal
AU - Hirsch, Alex
AU - Hmurovic, Jillian
AU - Horn, Samantha
AU - Karlan, Dean S.
AU - Kristal, Ariella S.
AU - Lamberton, Cait
AU - Meyer, Michelle N.
AU - Oakes, Allison H.
AU - Schweitzer, Maurice E.
AU - Shermohammed, Maheen
AU - Talloen, Joachim
AU - Warren, Caleb
AU - Whillans, Ashley
AU - Yadav, Kuldeep N.
AU - Zlatev, Julian J.
AU - Berman, Ron
AU - Evans, Chalanda N.
AU - Ladhania, Rahul
AU - Ludwig, Jens
AU - Mazar, Nina
AU - Mullainathan, Sendhil
AU - Snider, Christopher K.
AU - Spiess, Jann
AU - Tsukayama, Eli
AU - Ungar, Lyle
AU - Van den Bulte, Christophe
AU - Volpp, Kevin G.
AU - Duckworth, Angela L.
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Research reported in this publication was supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Flu Lab, the Penn Center for Precision Medicine Accelerator Fund, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Support for this research was also provided in part by the AKO Foundation, John Alexander, Mark J. Leder, and Warren G. Lichtenstein. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of any of the listed entities. We thank Aden Halpern for outstanding research assistance and Walmart for partnering with the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania to make this research possible.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/2/8
Y1 - 2022/2/8
N2 - Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages. We found that the reminder texts that we tested increased pharmacy vaccination rates by an average of 2.0 percentage points, or 6.8%, over a 3-mo follow-up period. The mosteffective messages reminded patients that a flu shot was waiting for them and delivered reminders on multiple days. The topperforming intervention included two texts delivered 3 d apart and communicated to patients that a vaccine was "waiting for you." Neither experts nor lay people anticipated that this would be the best-performing treatment, underscoring the value of simultaneously testing many different nudges in a highly powered megastudy.
AB - Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages. We found that the reminder texts that we tested increased pharmacy vaccination rates by an average of 2.0 percentage points, or 6.8%, over a 3-mo follow-up period. The mosteffective messages reminded patients that a flu shot was waiting for them and delivered reminders on multiple days. The topperforming intervention included two texts delivered 3 d apart and communicated to patients that a vaccine was "waiting for you." Neither experts nor lay people anticipated that this would be the best-performing treatment, underscoring the value of simultaneously testing many different nudges in a highly powered megastudy.
KW - COVID-19
KW - Field experiment
KW - Influenza
KW - Nudge
KW - Vaccination
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2115126119
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2115126119
M3 - Article
C2 - 35105809
AN - SCOPUS:85123972905
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 119
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 6
M1 - e2115126119
ER -
