The importance of Social Norms against Strategic Effects: The case of Covid-19 vaccine uptake

Marina Agranov; Matt Elliott; Pietro Ortoleva

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109979

The importance of Social Norms against Strategic Effects: The case of Covid-19 vaccine uptake

Econ Lett. 2021 Sep:206:109979. doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109979. Epub 2021 Jul 2.

Authors

Marina Agranov¹, Matt Elliott², Pietro Ortoleva³

Affiliations

¹ Division of the Humanities and Social Science, California Institute of Technology, United States of America.
² Faculty of Economics at Cambridge University, United States of America.
³ Department of Economics and Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, United States of America.

Abstract

We study how individual decisions are affected by those of other members of the society. We use the vaccine against COVID-19 as a case study and empirically estimate the magnitude of three key forces: Herding, Social Norms, and Free-riding. We find that Free-riding is dominated by the other two forces, and that Social Norms are a key driver of behavior. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity and systematic differences between people by demographics and their political preferences.

Keywords: Experiment; Free-riding; Social norms; Vaccine.