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Milkman KL, Ellis SF, Gromet DM, Jung Y, Luscher AS, Mobarak RS, Paxson MK, Silvera Zumaran RA, Kuan R, Berman R, Lewis NA, List JA, Patel MS, Van den Bulte C, Volpp KG, Beauvais MV, Bellows JK, Marandola CA, Duckworth AL. Megastudy shows that reminders boost vaccination but adding free rides does not. Nature 2024; 631:179-188. [PMID: 38926578 PMCID: PMC11222156 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07591-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2023] [Accepted: 05/20/2024] [Indexed: 06/28/2024]
Abstract
Encouraging routine COVID-19 vaccinations is likely to be a crucial policy challenge for decades to come. To avert hundreds of thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths, adoption will need to be higher than it was in the autumn of 2022 or 2023, when less than one-fifth of Americans received booster vaccines1,2. One approach to encouraging vaccination is to eliminate the friction of transportation hurdles. Previous research has shown that friction can hinder follow-through3 and that individuals who live farther from COVID-19 vaccination sites are less likely to get vaccinated4. However, the value of providing free round-trip transportation to vaccination sites is unknown. Here we show that offering people free round-trip Lyft rides to pharmacies has no benefit over and above sending them behaviourally informed text messages reminding them to get vaccinated. We determined this by running a megastudy with millions of CVS Pharmacy patients in the United States testing the effects of (1) free round-trip Lyft rides to CVS Pharmacies for vaccination appointments and (2) seven different sets of behaviourally informed vaccine reminder messages. Our results suggest that offering previously vaccinated individuals free rides to vaccination sites is not a good investment in the United States, contrary to the high expectations of both expert and lay forecasters. Instead, people in the United States should be sent behaviourally informed COVID-19 vaccination reminders, which increased the 30-day COVID-19 booster uptake by 21% (1.05 percentage points) and spilled over to increase 30-day influenza vaccinations by 8% (0.34 percentage points) in our megastudy. More rigorous testing of interventions to promote vaccination is needed to ensure that evidence-based solutions are deployed widely and that ineffective but intuitively appealing tools are discontinued.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katherine L Milkman
- Department of Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
| | - Sean F Ellis
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Dena M Gromet
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Youngwoo Jung
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Alex S Luscher
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Rayyan S Mobarak
- Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
| | - Madeline K Paxson
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Ramon A Silvera Zumaran
- Behavior Change for Good Initiative, The Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Robert Kuan
- Department of Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Ron Berman
- Department of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Neil A Lewis
- Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
| | - John A List
- Department of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Mitesh S Patel
- Clinical Transformation and Behavioral Insights, Ascension Health, St Louis, MO, USA
| | | | - Kevin G Volpp
- Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, Departments of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | | | | | | | - Angela L Duckworth
- Department of Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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