Sasaki Shusaku, Kurokawa Hirofumi, Ohtake Fumio
Faculty of Economics, Tohoku Gakuin University, 1-3-1 Tsuchitoi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 985-8537 Japan.
Center for Infectious Disease Education and Research (CiDER), Osaka University, 2-8, Yamadaoka, Suita City, Osaka 565-0871 Japan.
Jpn Econ Rev (Oxf). 2021;72(3):371-408. doi: 10.1007/s42973-021-00076-w. Epub 2021 Jun 14.
Nudge-based messages have been employed in various countries to encourage voluntary contact-avoidance and infection-prevention behaviors to control the spread of COVID-19. People have been repeatedly exposed to such messages; however, whether the messages keep exerting a significant impact over time remains unclear. From April to August 2020, we conducted a four-wave online survey experiment to examine how five types of nudge-based messages influence Japanese people's self-reported preventive behaviors. In particular, we investigate how their behaviors are affected by repeated displays over time. The analysis with 4241 participants finds that only a gain-framed altruistic message, emphasizing their behavioral adherence would protect the lives of people close to them, reduces their frequency of going out and contacting others. We do not find similar behavioral changes in messages that contain an altruistic element but emphasize it in a loss-frame or describe their behavioral adherence as protecting both one's own and others' lives. Furthermore, the behavioral change effect of the gain-framed altruistic message disappears in the third and fourth waves, although its impact of reinforcing intentions remains. This message has even an adverse effect of worsening the compliance level of infection-prevention behaviors for the subgroup who went out less frequently before the experiment. The study's results imply that when using nudge-based messages as a countermeasure for COVID-19, policymakers and practitioners need to carefully scrutinize the message elements and wording and examine to whom and how the messages should be delivered while considering their potential adverse and side effects.
基于助推的信息已在各国被用于鼓励自愿避免接触和预防感染行为，以控制新冠病毒的传播。人们反复接触此类信息；然而，随着时间推移这些信息是否持续产生重大影响仍不清楚。2020年4月至8月，我们进行了一项四波次的在线调查实验，以研究五种基于助推的信息如何影响日本人自我报告的预防行为。特别是，我们调查随着时间的重复展示，他们的行为是如何受到影响的。对4241名参与者的分析发现，只有一条强调行为坚持能保护身边人生命的收益框架利他信息，会减少他们外出和与他人接触的频率。我们在包含利他元素但以损失框架强调或描述行为坚持为保护自己和他人生命的信息中，未发现类似的行为变化。此外，收益框架利他信息的行为改变效果在第三波和第四波中消失了，尽管其强化意图的影响仍然存在。对于实验前外出频率较低的亚组，这条信息甚至产生了使感染预防行为合规水平恶化的不利影响。该研究结果表明，在将基于助推的信息用作应对新冠疫情的对策时，政策制定者和从业者需要仔细审查信息元素和措辞，并在考虑其潜在不利影响和副作用的同时，研究信息应传达给谁以及如何传达。
