Department of Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1772, USA.
Annu Rev Public Health. 2013;34:431-47. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031912-114353. Epub 2013 Jan 7.
People often make decisions in health care that are not in their best interest, ranging from failing to enroll in health insurance to which they are entitled, to engaging in extremely harmful behaviors. Traditional economic theory provides a limited tool kit for improving behavior because it assumes that people make decisions in a rational way, have the mental capacity to deal with huge amounts of information and choice, and have tastes endemic to them and not open to manipulation. Melding economics with psychology, behavioral economics acknowledges that people often do not act rationally in the economic sense. It therefore offers a potentially richer set of tools than provided by traditional economic theory to understand and influence behaviors. Only recently, however, has it been applied to health care. This article provides an overview of behavioral economics, reviews some of its contributions, and shows how it can be used in health care to improve people's decisions and health.
人们在医疗保健方面经常做出不符合自身最佳利益的决策，范围从未能参加本应参加的医疗保险，到从事极其有害的行为。传统经济理论提供了一套有限的工具来改善行为，因为它假设人们以理性的方式做出决策，有能力处理大量的信息和选择，并且具有内在的品味，不受操纵。将经济学与心理学相结合，行为经济学承认人们在经济意义上并不总是理性行事。因此，它提供了比传统经济理论更丰富的工具集，以理解和影响行为。然而，直到最近，它才被应用于医疗保健领域。本文概述了行为经济学，回顾了它的一些贡献，并展示了如何在医疗保健中使用它来改善人们的决策和健康。
