Topic: The backfiring effects of monetary and gift incentives on Covid-19 vaccination willingness
Abstract: Policies offering material incentives for Covid-19 vaccination have been widely used around the world as countries pursue the pressing objective of boosting immunity. This paper reports an experiment in China aimed at testing the effects of such interventions on vaccination willing ness. We provide the first Covid-19 vaccine study to separately consider and directly compare the effects of both monetary and gift-based incentives, both of which have been commonly employed in practice. Results from a sample of 1,365 individuals suggest that incentives in the range of 8-125 USD backfire inducing lower vaccination willingness than simply offering vaccines for free. The effects of money and gifts of equivalent value do not significantly differ. We compare our results against the burgeoning literature on Covid-19 vaccine incentives, and demonstrate that the negative effects we identify are stronger than those observed to date in other populations.
Guest speaker：Dr Tom Lane
Dr Lane is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo and received his PhD from the University of Nottingham, UK in 2017. He is a member of the Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, and head of the China branch. His research topics cover discrimination, social norms, happiness, religion and information transmission, and he has published papers in leading journals such as Journal of Public Economicsand Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
Time: 20:00-21:30 Thursday 6 October 2022 (Beijing time) 13:00-14:30 (UK time)