BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: HOW UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR HELPS POLICY-MAKERS IN TIMES OF CRISIS

In crisis situations like the Covid-19 pandemic, human behaviour plays a vital role. Understanding how people behave, why, and what might change their behaviour is thus crucial for governments and public health authorities. Such understanding can be enhanced through the use of behavioural science. This paper reviews some examples of the actual use of behavioural science to inform the Covid-19 pandemic policy response. Most (but not all) are drawn from the Irish pandemic response, reflecting the authors’ direct involvement in behavioural research for policy in this country and also Ireland’s systematic application of behavioural science during the pandemic. The review describes how different methods from behavioural science were deployed and discusses their merits and potential limitations. It summarises some lessons learned in two years of the pandemic, with the goal of improving the use of behavioural science in future crisis situations. © 2022, Sistemi Intelligenti. All Rights Reserved.

Reporting on one's behavior: a survey experiment on the nonvalidity of self-reported COVID-19 hygiene-relevant routine behaviors

Surveys based on self-reported hygiene-relevant routine behaviors have played a crucial role in policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, using anchoring to test validity in a randomized controlled survey experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we demonstrate that asking people to self-report on the frequency of routine behaviors are prone to significant measurement error and systematic bias. Specifically, we find that participants across age, gender, and political allegiance report higher (lower) frequencies of COVID-19-relevant behaviors when provided with a higher (lower) anchor. The results confirm that such self-reports should not be regarded as behavioral data and should primarily be used to inform policy decisions if better alternatives are not available. To this end, we discuss the use of anchoring as a validity test relative to self-reported behaviors as well as viable alternatives to self-reports when seeking to behaviorally inform policy decisions.

"Keep your distance for me": A field experiment on empathy prompts to promote distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has turned out to be a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Curbing the pandemic requires rapid and extensive behavioural change to limit social interaction, including physical distancing. In this study, we tested the notion that inducing empathy for people vulnerable to the virus may result in actual distancing behaviour beyond the mere motivation to do so. In a large field experiment with a sequential case-control design, we found that (a) empathy prompts may increase distancing as assessed by camera recordings and (b) effectiveness of prompts depends on the dynamics of the pandemic and associated public health policies. In sum, the present study demonstrates the potential of empathy-generating interventions to promote pro-social behaviour and emphasizes the necessity of field experiments to assess the role of context before advising policy makers to implement measures derived from behavioural science. Please refer to Supplementary Material to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.