Moving the Needle: Association Between a Vaccination Reward Lottery and COVID-19 Vaccination Uptake in Louisiana.

OBJECTIVE: On June 17, 2021, Louisiana launched a lottery campaign to reward residents who received a COVID-19 vaccination. We investigated the association between the lottery and vaccination uptake by characteristics of parishes. METHODS: We constructed an interrupted time series based on daily parish-level data on COVID-19 vaccinations to analyze the association with the lottery. We used recursive partitioning to separate vaccination uptake due to the Delta variant from vaccination uptake due to the lottery and limited our study period to May 25 through July 20, 2021. We performed subanalyses that grouped parishes by political affiliation, hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status to detect heterogeneous responses to the lottery by these characteristics. We ran models separately for parishes in the top and bottom tertiles of each sociodemographic indicator and used a z test to check for differences. RESULTS: The lottery was associated with an additional 1.03 (95% CI, 0.61-1.45; P < .001) first doses per parish per day. Comparing lottery impacts between top and bottom tertiles, we found significantly larger associations in parishes with lower vaccine hesitancy rates, higher percentage of Hispanic population, higher median annual household income, and more people with a college degree. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the lottery was associated with increased COVID-19 vaccination uptake in Louisiana. However, larger associations were observed in parishes with an already higher likelihood of accepting vaccines, which raises equity issues about the opportunity created by the lottery and its effectiveness as a long-term behavioral incentive.

Associations between Bonus and Lottery COVID-19 Vaccine Incentive Policies and Increases in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: A Social Epidemiologic Analysis.

The objectives of this longitudinal study were to analyze the impact of COVID-19 vaccine incentive policies (e.g., bonuses and lottery entries) on county-level COVID-19 vaccination rates, and to examine the interactive effects between COVID-19 vaccine incentive policies and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 vaccination rates. Using publicly available data, county-level COVID-19 vaccination rates and socioeconomic data between January 2021 and July 2021 were extracted and analyzed across counties in the United States (US)-an analysis of 19,992 observations over time. Pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis was employed to longitudinally examine associations with COVID-19 vaccination rates, and four random-effects models were developed to analyze interaction effects. Bonus incentive policies were effective in counties with a high per capita income, high levels of education, and a high percentage of racial minorities, but not in counties with high unemployment. Lottery incentive policies were effective in counties with a high percentage of racial minorities, but not in counties with high per capita income, high levels of education, and high unemployment. County-level socioeconomic factors should be considered ahead of implementing incentive policies, versus a blanket approach, to avoid the unintentional misuse of economic resources for futile COVID-19 vaccination outcomes.

Exploring the Impact of the US’s Lottery Incentives on COVID-19 Vaccination Rates

Many states in the US have carried out lotteries with tantalizing prizes to reduce the covid-19 vaccine hesitancy. However, there has yet been a consensus regarding the effectiveness of such incentives. This study conducts a synthetic control analysis for each treated state, to provide a better understanding of the influence that the lottery programs have made on the vaccination rates across different states. However, for all treated states, no evidence is found for the effects of the lotteries. Next, the article investigates the impact of people's policy ideology on the prediction of the vaccination rates under the synthetic control models. Within each treated state, counties are categorized into two regions according to their political affiliation. The comparison of the treatment effects between the two regions indicates that there is no relationship between people's policy ideology and the vaccination rates. © 2021 ACM.