Behavioral nudges have long followed a one-size-fits-all playbook. Research has consistently looked for the most impactful way to encourage a given behavior — save more, exercise more, get vaccinated — with a focus on what might work for everyone.
UCLA Anderson’s Ilana Brody, a Ph.D. student, and Hengchen Dai, Carnegie Mellon’s Silvia Saccardo, University of Pennsylvania’s Katherine Milkman, Angela Duckworth and Dena Gromet, and Ascension’s Mitesh Patel use flu vaccination as their testing ground to address the fact that behavioral roadblocks exist along a spectrum.
In a field experiment involving nearly 3 million people designed to encourage flu vaccination, the researchers found that nudging people who had been vaccinated the prior year with a reminder to schedule a shot increased vaccination rates by about 1 percentage point compared with past vaccinators who did not receive a flu-related message.