Increasing COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions: A Field Experiment on Psychological Ownership

TY - JOUR

T1 - Increasing COVID-19 Vaccination Intentions

T2 - A Field Experiment on Psychological Ownership

AU - Keppeler, Florian

AU - Sievert, Martin

AU - Jilke, Sebastian

PY - 2025/1/1

Y1 - 2025/1/1

N2 - With the increasing availability of life-saving vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, government agencies face the challenge of promoting vaccine uptake. Thus, encouraging vaccine uptake marks an urgent policy challenge in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. This study builds on the theory of psychological ownership to design a behaviorally inspired local government vaccination campaign. We conducted a large-scale, cluster-randomized field experiment (N = 27,298 residents nested in 6,442 addresses) delivered to all registered residents of a German municipality via an official mailing campaign. The campaign included a psychological ownership intervention designed to boost residents' intentions to get vaccinated - measured through unique link clicks on a municipal website where people can schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment. Findings suggest that adding possessive pronouns (i.e., 'YOUR vaccination') increases vaccination intentions by 39%, or 2.5 percentage points (p < 0.0001 [95% CI = 1.8%, 3.3%], control letter: 6.4%, treatment letter: 8.9%). The discussion outlines the value of using psychological ownership-based nudge interventions to increase vaccine uptake and other desirable behaviors.

AB - With the increasing availability of life-saving vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, government agencies face the challenge of promoting vaccine uptake. Thus, encouraging vaccine uptake marks an urgent policy challenge in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. This study builds on the theory of psychological ownership to design a behaviorally inspired local government vaccination campaign. We conducted a large-scale, cluster-randomized field experiment (N = 27,298 residents nested in 6,442 addresses) delivered to all registered residents of a German municipality via an official mailing campaign. The campaign included a psychological ownership intervention designed to boost residents' intentions to get vaccinated - measured through unique link clicks on a municipal website where people can schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment. Findings suggest that adding possessive pronouns (i.e., 'YOUR vaccination') increases vaccination intentions by 39%, or 2.5 percentage points (p < 0.0001 [95% CI = 1.8%, 3.3%], control letter: 6.4%, treatment letter: 8.9%). The discussion outlines the value of using psychological ownership-based nudge interventions to increase vaccine uptake and other desirable behaviors.

KW - COVID-19

KW - Field experiment

KW - Nudge

KW - Psychological ownership

KW - Vaccination

KW - field experiment

KW - psychological ownership

KW - nudge

KW - vaccination

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85217464149&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/bpp.2022.16

DO - 10.1017/bpp.2022.16

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2398-063X

VL - 9

SP - 16

EP - 35

JO - Behavioural Public Policy

JF - Behavioural Public Policy

IS - 1

ER -